The largest ski resort company in the world, Vail Resorts, announced a deal this morning to buy North America’s biggest ski mountain for just over USD$1 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition of Whistler Blackcomb brings Vail Resorts’ portfolio to a dozen mountain resorts including the most-visited in the United States, Canada and Australia. Vail Resorts, Inc. will also own six of the top ten mountains by skier visits in North America. The company has been looking to grow internationally since acquiring Australia’s Perisher Resort in 2015.
Whistler Blackcomb Holdings currently trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange. CEO Dave Brownie says the company’s board has been “monitoring the unique challenges facing the broader ski industry due to the unpredictability of year-to-year regional weather patterns.” As a result, the Whistler Blackcomb board accepted a takeover offer from Vail that places a 43 percent premium over Friday’s stock price, valuing W-B Holdings at CDN$1.39 billion.
The deal is expected to close before the end of the year. On the season pass front, Whistler Blackcomb will quit the Liftopia-powered Mountain Collective pass after this season and join Vail’s Epic Pass. Epic pass-holders will have access to 253 lifts at Vail’s 12 resorts in three countries.
Whistler Blackcomb announced a $345 million capital improvement plan called Renaissance earlier this year that will include new lifts on both mountains over the next 20 years and Vail intends to continue investing in this initiative.
Lift Blog 
I’m not liking this at all! Prices are going to skyrocket and Whistler will become a tourist trap. :(
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Owen, Whistler is already a tourist trap with the most skier visits a year.
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Eh. On a typical weekday at Whistler, it is very quiet. Weekends are when they get the most visitors. Now, however, more people are going to go making weekends even worse and weekdays bad. Keep in mind that Vail Resorts markets a lot and Whistler didn’t.
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It’s almost as if the folks at Liftopia and the Mountain Collective knew this was coming. They will announce a new resort partner tomorrow.
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Just announced, Revelstoke and Telluride are joining the Mountain Collective. Solid additions with W-B leaving next year.
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This doesn’t have to do with this post, but on the Vail lift spreadsheet on this website, the West Wall platter is no longer in operation. The reason I’m commenting here is because there is no place to comment on the Vail chairlift list.
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Thanks for the head’s up. Looks like it disappeared from the trail map around 2007.
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Another interesting component of this is Whistler Blackcomb just spent $5.9 million on SKIDATA RFID technology which is not compatible with Vail Resorts’ proprietary EpicMix system. When Vail bought Park City they ripped out all the Axess infrastructure to put in EpicMix. Presumably they will do the same at W-B.
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And the SAP software we just bought last year (or the one before). To update the vancouver sun story, Vail were looking at WB for nearly 18 months before they came up with a deal we liked.
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