🎿 What The Hell Is Going on in Utah Right Now?

I’m not sure if I’ve become a bigger fan of someone recently than I have of Arthur Blank.

I explain more about why here, but he exudes a sort of “old-fashioned” style of business that I’ve come to respect as I realize how rare it has become. More on that later.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: What The Hell Is Going on in Utah Right Now?

📉 Biggest Loser: The NFL, NBA and UFC’s $28 Billion Headache Just Got a Little Better

🏆 Winner’s Circle: The Browns Want to Leave Cleveland (Again), But The City Won’t Let Them

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🗞 The Big Story

What the hell is going on in Utah right now?

After the busiest ski week of the year left thousands of people waiting hours in line to ride chairlifts and for medical attention, I decided to dig into what’s actually going on here.

And the solution to all of this is much simpler than you might think.

Background: Park City Mountain in Utah is the largest ski resort in the country by liff access, with over 11 square miles of skiable terrain. For reference, that’s the equivalent of:

• 7,300 acres

• 5,525 football fields

• Half the island of Manhattan

So, if there is so much space to ski, why were thousands of people waiting 2-3 hours in line to get on a chairlift?

The short answer is that less than 20% of the entire mountain was open, but there’s a good reason for that.

Contract Negotiations: For the past nine months, the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association, representing all of the resort’s 200 ski patrollers, has been negotiating with the Park City’s parent company, Vail Resorts, for a new contract.

As of December 27th, the two sides had reached a tentative agreement on 24 of the union’s 27 proposed contract terms, but when Vail said they were unwilling to negotiate any further on the final few points, all 200 ski patrollers went on strike before the busiest week of the year.

So what were these final demands that Vail Resorts thought were so unreasonable?

Patrollers’ Demands: It turns out Vail didn’t want to raise the starting pay for their patrollers from $21 to $23 per hour.

For reference, this increase of $2 per hour for all patrollers currently on staff, including a slight boost in benefits, would only cost Vail $747,000 annually.

And for a company that charges $328 for one-day lift tickets and $25 for a hamburger at the resort, that doesn’t seem like a big ask.

In fact, last year, Vail Resorts netted $230.4 million in profit. Still, instead of giving their current employees a much-needed raise, they decided to open their resort on the busiest weekend of the year with just 35 ski patrollers brought in from somewhere else.

The result was a PR disaster and more than $400 million in lost market value.

Things finally reached a tipping point when, earlier this week, a tentative agreement was reached that will last through April 2027.

As of right now, no details have been released on the final resolution, but hopefully, those ski patrollers got their raise.

📉 Biggest Loser

The three biggest sports leagues in the world are losing $28 billion per year because of a company you’ve never heard of.

But the solution to this problem isn’t as simple as they want you to think.

Top Streaming Sites Shutdown: On December 31st, the owners of two of the most popular illegal streaming sites, Methstreams and Crackstreams, announced that they would be shutting down operations effective immediately.

This decision was likely a result of the anti-piracy organization The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment or ACE’s recent shutdown of hundreds of websites based in Vietnam.

According to ACE, this underground ring of sites had attracted 812 million viewers in 2024 alone, with most of that traffic likely coming from illegally pirating live American sports events.

Significant Revenue Lost: The NFL, NBA, and UFC said in a joint letter to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last year that illegal streaming operations like these cost the global sports industry “up to $28 billion in additional potential annual revenue.”

There’s just one problem with their complaint: nobody cares.

To watch every NFL game this year across six different channels and four different streaming services, you would have had to pay $788… so it’s no wonder that fans are finding cheaper alternatives.

But the cost isn’t even the worst part.

In their letter to the U.S. government, the NFL, NBA, and UFC suggested that copyright laws be updated so that these leagues can “instantaneously or near-instantaneously” take down content they deem violates their copyright.

Luckily, social media platforms have pushed back on this by claiming that it’s too restrictive of internet freedoms, but who knows… that could all change given Meta’s latest board member.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

The Cleveland Browns want to build a brand new, $2.4 billion domed stadium, but the city won’t let them.

However, this feud isn’t as straightforward as you might think.

Background: In 1995, Browns owner Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore, leaving the city without a team for four years.

However, during that time, Ohio passed the “Modell Law,” which stated that any professional sports team that uses a taxpayer-funded stadium and wants to relocate “elsewhere” must offer the team for sale to the city or local buyers.

New Stadium Proposal: So when the team’s current owners, Jimmy and Dee Haslam, proposed a new $2.4 billion dome 16 miles outside of downtown Cleveland and requested that half of it be paid for with public funding, the city of Cleveland invoked the Modell Law and requested to see the team’s financial records so they could help facilitate a sale to local ownership that would keep the team downtown.

There’s just one problem… that law might actually not be legal.

Law Is Too Vague: That’s because the way it was written was purposely vague, stating that it only applies to a team looking to relocate “elsewhere,” but what does “elsewhere” mean?

Does it mean down the street? 15 miles away, or is it only relevant if the team is trying to leave the state entirely?

Jimmy and Dee Haslam think that because the law is so vague it doesn’t apply here, which is why they sued the city in October for trying to prevent the team’s move to the suburbs.

And as of right now, that’s where things stand. Either an Ohio federal judge says the law is constitutional and the city has the right to try and buy the team, or he says that it’s not legal and that the Haslams can move the team out of Cleveland and to the suburbs.

Talk about a dumpster fire.

⏱️ In Other News

• The NFL’s Biggest Rebel: The (Untold) Story of Arthur Blank

• The NFL takes 72 to the US Top 100 Most-Watched TV Programs.

• The 2018 QB Draft Class: A Retrospective.

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

Did you know that when Arthur Blank opened Mercedez-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in 2017 (and finally had full control over the food and beverage service), he decided to slash the price of every item on the menu to 20% of the league average?

And do you know what the result was of $2 hot dogs?

Per-capita spending went up 16%, not to mention fan spending on team merchandise went up 80%.

It’s almost like not intentionally screwing over your customers…. works?