SAM Magazine—Boston, Feb. 7, 2025—Super Bowl Sunday, once the first Sunday of February and nowadays the second Sunday, takes place smack in the middle of peak season. Conditions are usually (finally!) up to snuff and the sun stays higher in the sky a tiny bit longer, meaning less flat light and more fun runs.

And yet, Super Bowl Sunday, despite the many tries of more than a few ski areas, tends to bring the same vibe whether your team made the big show or not: ghost town.

“It's a tough nut to crack, and no deal or promotion, regardless of how wicked awesome it is, will persuade a football fan to miss the big game,” said Bonnie MacPherson, marketing director at Gunstock Mountain, N.H., an easy day-trip drive from the greater Boston market, where football has been king since the Patriots dynasty began circa 2002.

She knows of what she speaks. MacPherson has served in marketing roles at New England resorts since before the Pats went on that tear. 

As a Pats fan, she said, the dynasty years were glorious. As a resort marketer? Not so much. “As much as I love it when the Pats are a [Super Bowl] contender, it turns the ski slopes into a ghost town on a prime-time weekend,” she said.

So then, did the dismal Pats showing of the last two years change things? Not so much, MacPherson said.

“Despite who is playing, Super Bowl Sunday starts strong and finishes early (at ski areas) in New England. There will be a mass exodus at noon. We're football fans and, as much as we love carving up the snow on a midwinter weekend, nachos and chicken wings in front of the big screen at gametime is a tradition we're not willing to forego,” she said.

Longtime marketing and ops professional Pat Morgan, head of freestyle terrain at Kissing Bridge—located in the center of Buffalo Bills territory—said on any given Sunday in western New York, locals know, the supermarket is empty, the roads are quiet, and really, almost everyone is glued to their couch and big screen, hoping (still) this will be the year they make it all the way. 

Still, like the loyal Bills fan stung once again, Morgan looks ahead to Super Bowl Sunday with hope for the ski area. “I think you should be able to parlay it into some fun,” he said of the day. “Not everyone wants to host a party or go to a bar where it’s loud and hard to hear the game,” he said. “So, there is opportunity there.”

The ski area has tried some creative things, like giant cutouts of Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes that skiers are encouraged to whip snowballs at as they pass. But drawing Bills fans away from a high-stakes game, “It’s hopeless,” said Morgan.

At Wachusett Mountain just outside of Boston, when the Patriots made the playoffs for the first time in a long time in the late 1990s, the ski area hoped to attract skiers via a Super Bowl promo. “If you could name the entire roster, you got half off your lift ticket,” said long-time Wachusett marketing director Tom Meyers. “No one knew them then!”

In the Pats’ glory years, the Wachusett crew realized quickly that getting your home-team-loving guests out skiing on Super Bowl Sunday was near impossible.

“We tried everything,” said Meyers. “We threw the kitchen sink at it.” That included a giant inflatable big screen TV at the base of lifts so folks could catch plays between runs, a halftime giveaway of a reclining chair and television, and more. 

What they learned was this, he said: “You can promote it all day long and in reality, the only people who are going to come out that day are the people who don’t care about football.”

“Still,” he said, “We’ve had a lot of fun trying.”

One promotion that did work?

The day after Super Bowl XLIX, when the Seattle Seahawks were one yard from the win with just 26 second left, trailing by just four points (in other words, teed up for a sure victory), and Patriots defenseman Malcom Butler intercepted for the win, “anyone with the first or last name of Malcolm or Butler skied free the next day,” said Meyer. 

Report by Moira McCarthy