Tech Billionaire Matthew Prince wants to buy Park City Mountain. Vail Resorts, the corporation that owns and operates the ski resort, says it’s not up for sale. Still, Prince isn’t letting the idea go. Vail has plenty of bottom-line justification for keeping the resort in its portfolio, including that it adds a lot of value to Epic Pass sales. Still, Prince isn’t backing down. And now that the salary of Vail’s CEO Rob Katz has been revealed, guess what? Matthew Prince has something to say about his unrelenting urge to buy Park City Mountain.
Last week, Vail Resorts’ U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission report was made public, which contains details of Katz’s compensation package: a $1-million base salary, a bonus package worth up to another $1 million, $3 million in shares of the company’s stock (NYSE: MTN), and $80,000 in expenses that can be spent at the company’s resorts each year.
When local news outlet KPCW Radio shared details of the multi-million dollar pay package, Prince chimed in with a counter offer.
“When I own Park City Mountain I’ll (obviously) not take any pay or dividend but, more importantly, create a profit sharing plan where 100 percent of annual profit goes back to employees and infrastructure upgrades,” he wrote on X.
When I own Park City Mountain I’ll (obviously) not take any pay or dividend but, more importantly, create a profit sharing plan where 100% of annual profit goes back to employees and infrastructure upgrades. https://t.co/rBT7gHEZ1t
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) October 4, 2025
In further discussion on the post, Prince added that “resort ownership is hard if you need to do dividends and stock buybacks. If all you care about is serving the community, taking care of your team, and investing in infrastructure — and you explicitly never care about making money — then resort ownership can be great,” also stating that his desire to own the resort isn’t about money.
Prince has said in the past his intention for Park City is to focus on strengthening resort infrastructure. It is his home resort and where he began skiing, so many of his public statements about purchasing the resort have alluded to his personal nostalgia. While Vail has remained steady in its stance that Park City isn’t for sale, Prince has presented the idea as if a sale is “inevitable,” something he pointed out in this week’s social media discussion.
“Write to Vail’s Board. Also write to the Park City City Council and the Summit County Council. This is inevitable, just a matter of time,” he told one user who seemed to be in Prince’s corner, or at least in favor of a change of ownership.
As CEO of Cloudfare, Prince is no stranger to outside criticism. He’s faced scrutiny in the past over the company’s approach to content moderation as well as a 2023 controversy in which he publicly labeled some of the company’s sales employees as “lazy.” The comments were put under a microscope when an employee recorded their termination call in 2024. Prince later publicly acknowledged the handling of the situation was flawed and said the viral video was “hard to watch.”
