Man takes 99% pay cut ($7.5 MM/yr to $75k/yr) to become college basketball NIL manager

This is a great story. The best economics stories are in sports today.

Would it be possible for a billionaire to put $50 or $100 million/year into a college basketball program and buy a ticket to the Final Four?

That could be at least as interesting as buying Twitter.

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With the consolidation of ski areas by megacorps, the price of skiing in the US has gone through the roof. It’s cheaper to ski in the Swiss Alps, including the plane fare.

One of the ski industry megacorps, Powdr, is selling off some of it’s ski areas. Community groups in Bend, OR, and Nederland, CO are looking into buying their local ski areas. Reminds me of the Green Bay Packers, which I know nothing about.

It started as a joke on a Facebook forum in August, when news came that Mount Bachelor, one of the country’s biggest ski areas, was for sale.

“I’ve got $20 and some old boards I can pitch in,” wrote Dan Cochrane, a snowboarder from nearby Bend, Oregon.

Mt. Bachelor Community Inc. plans to submit a formal bid to Powdr any day now, probably in the neighborhood of $200 million. Will it be in time? Will it be enough? Will it be considered?

Since the news broke of the Town of Nederland’s idea to acquire the Eldora ski area, affiliates across the state have taken notice. Certain parties have expressed their interest in the prospect of investing, or even partnering, and speculation about every conceivable aspect of this Idea of a Concept of a Plan has spread across different media platforms all over Colorado.

“The only real feasible path forward is for us to take a revenue bond, which is created from what is called an enterprise fund,” Cain explained. “We think this will align with the goals of the community as it will run separately from the rest of the Town. It would have its own revenue, its own expenditures, would be operated professionally, and run like a business.”

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The number of Americans taking ski vacations to Japan are exploding as well for the same reason. The mega companies have jacked the cost of day passes beyond any reason. But the number of ski days is setting records. The reason is the megapass model. A megapass gives you access to multiple resorts across North America, and even some in Japan and Europe. At many resorts access is unlimited–ski as much as you like. Others might be limited to five or seven days. There are two competing megapass companies Alterra (Ikon pass) and Vail (Epic Pass).

The way it works is that the megapass goes on sale sometime in the summer, and gradually increases in price until about Dec 1, when sales stop. This works out great for the megacorps, because they get all their money up front regardless of the snow year.

For skiers with the pass, the cost is sunk, so you might as well go any time you like instead of saving up for when conditions are good, so people are skiing more. This also works out great for the megacorps. The marginal costs of adding more skiers is essentially zero. Plus they get more sales in the lodge and can charge for parking.

The downside is that casual skiers or skiers on the lower end of the economic spectrum are locked out of the sport.

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