At one point the world’s most visited online snow sports portal, OnTheSnow.com -owned by Vail Resort’s Mountain News Corp- announced othat they will be shutting their site, as of July 13th, 2020. Unfortunately given the changing media landscape, OnTheSnow.com has experienced financial declines in recent years and now face additional economic challenges from COVID-19.
As stated by MNC: We have been proud to provide you with free access to snow reports, resort guides, and more, and we are beyond grateful for your readership and contributions to our community over the years. Unfortunately given the changing media landscape, Mountain News Corporation has experienced financial declines in recent years. Mountain News Corporation and our OnTheSnow and Skiinfo websites will stop operating on July 13, 2020.”
In 2010 Vail Resorts acquired California based ‘Mountain News Corp’, which at that time operated the world’s most visited online snow sports portal, OnTheSnow.com. OnTheSnow.com and it’s sister SkiInfo featured snow reports for more than 2,000 ski and snowboard resorts around the world, along with live resort webcams, video, resort information and news, vacation packages and deals, user-generated resort reviews, and a comprehensive ski and snowboard gear guide.
MNC is the top provider of snow reports to more than 1,200 web sites throughout the world, including approximately 400 news media websites. In addition to their snow reports and website, OnTheSnow.com publishes and delivers a weekly e-mail newsletter to its database of more than 250,000 subscribers worldwide. According to the Nielsen Audit & Demographic Study in January 2010, OnTheSnow.com is used by more snow sports enthusiasts to research and plan their ski and ride vacation than any other online source with more than 2.2 million unique visits per month during peak periods. OnTheSnow.com was the most visited snow sports web site as measured by Experian Hitwise in January 2010.
Update (12 oct): A substantial portion of the assets of Mountain News Corporation have been acquired from Vail Resorts by an investment group led by Chad Dyer and Jon Brelig, two ski industry digital pioneers.