George N. Gillett Jr. died on September 22, 2026, at Highline Place Memory Care in Denver after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 87 and was surrounded by family and friends. An entrepreneur who spent his life turning big ideas into reality, he helped make Vail and Beaver Creek what they are today.
George was born and raised in Racine, Wisconsin. He loved sports and he knew early on that he would never make his living as an athlete. He found another way in. After Lake Forest Academy and Amherst College, he graduated from Dominican College in Racine in 1961. He began his career in sales at Crown Zellerbach and as a consultant with McKinsey & Company. In 1963, still a young man, he skied a one-year-old resort called Vail for the first time. It was the start of a love affair that lasted the rest of his life.
In 1966 he bought a 20 percent stake in the Miami Dolphins and became the team’s business manager. Two years later he sold his share and, with two partners, bought the struggling Harlem Globetrotters. George revived the team with an energetic marketing push. That included teaming up with CBS on an animated series about the Globetrotters, which became the most popular children’s program of its season and brought crowds back to the arenas. After the partners sold the team in 1975, George came home to Wisconsin. In 1978 he took over an ailing beef plant, Packerland, and turned it into a thriving business. In 1979 he bought three small television stations. The Gillett Group grew into the nation’s largest operator of network-affiliated stations after the networks themselves, with a dozen stations reaching from Baltimore to Santa Barbara. He was an early consolidator in numerous industries, from meatpacking and broadcasting to ski resorts and, later, auto dealerships.
…
In 2007 he entered NASCAR, and his team later merged with Petty Enterprises to become Richard Petty Motorsports. He also co-owned Liverpool Football Club from 2007 to 2010. In every venture, he hired good people and trusted them, listened more than he talked, and treated fans, employees and neighbors as partners.
— Vail Daily —