I went to the Rodeo Championships at Petco Park in San Diego and took notes on the fan experience, content, and the event overall, with a sports business lens. There were probably ~ 10-12,000 attendees and some good takeaways + opportunities.
Check out some of the visuals below and quick hit nuggets and observations here:
🤠 There were protesters outside the main gates, chanting with a megaphone and handing out pamphlets, speaking against cruelty to animals. It was a small but vocal group (fewer than 10 people)
🤠 One of the highlights was the Kids Fest before the event, clearly positioning this as a family outing and trying to get kids excited about rodeo. The Kids Fest included limited sponsor presence, but a handful of activities, including:
(Padres-branded) bounce houses, a bandana station to decorate your bandana, bouncy horses to ride, a lasso station to teach kids, a cowboy on stilts, and, naturally, line dancing (some impromptu, some planned), not live music. There was also, notably, no beer or food on sale (let alone free food) at the Kids Fest — something like free snow cones or kettle corn would’ve been great
🤠 There seemed to be a good amount of VIP elements and upsells — get up close to the animals and competition area before the event, and premium seating right up next to it
🤠 In addition to the National Anthem, the pre-event ceremony included a prayer, addressing and thanking the lord, and also tinged with patriotism thanking the troops
🤠 The demographics of attendees — mostly white, multi-generational families, young kids, older couples, too, and also a good amount of young adults and college-aged females (who were excited to put on the cowboy gear, no doubt). Also some Hispanics (we are in San Diego, after all)
🤠 There was not much pre-event pageantry overall besides some brief intros and very little explanation of the events and scoring. But this is championship Sunday, so perhaps less necessary
🤠 It’s a competition more than a show, so the competitors did not display much personality. Though I’d love to see more distinct outfits, including their horses. There was also little interaction with competitors until the very end. These competitors have intriguing stories (video vignettes peppered through the event would be cool). Post-event meet and greets would be advisable, too. Have CTAs for their social media accounts…
🤠 There was limited audience interaction or digital CTAs during the event, though if you dug in enough, you could find a live scoreboard website. It would be good otherwise have more interaction, too — predictions, ETWs, merch promos
🤠 While there wasn’t much sponsored elements (the kiss cam, for example, was non-branded, there was solid title sponsorship of each competition with prolonged exposure across screens, including a brand flag ride around on a horse before starting each event
🤠 Some, not all, of the riders’ shirts were decked out in sponsor logos, not quite motorsports-esque in volume
🤠 The co-branding with the San Diego Padres was unmistakable – from the colors and even the paper numbers on the competitors ( a bit tacky like they’re marathon runners) having Padres on them. The staff had sweet baseball uniform jerseys with San Diego Rodeo — sell those! Or auction them autographed autographs
🤠 There was a sweepstakes promoted on the video board, a toolbox ETW — with QR code on the board to enter
🤠 There is a good amount of downtime between events, with ample space to fill with content. There was later some audience interaction with kiss cam, dance cam, trivia, and even a marriage proposal. Sponsorable assets there
Definitely more opportunity for unique camera views — POV of the riders cowboy, of the support staff often right next to the action, a camera on the animals, the accessory riders
🤠 The highlight of the day was an acrobatic trick rider, doing stands and holds while horse riding. Impressive! And the crowd seemed to enjoy it, good fodder for social
🤠 Other random observations:
– Officials throw flags during events to denote fouls like NFL refs
– I saw a couple of cowboys gear-wearing girls filming a TikTok on the side of the concourse
– They emptied the bazooka of singalong songs, with a medley of all of them together during a 3-4 minute break
– There were a couple of times when people were honored on the dirt (including youth rodeo). If they can go on the dirt between events, I’d love to see some simple fun games like a horseshoe toss or something
– It feels like the sport could do a lot in collecting and sharing data — torque of the bucking horse, speed off the horses, heart rates of the riders, height of bucking bulls, perceived difficulty of the moves, etc.
Western culture is having a moment in the US, and that’s part of why I was interested to check out this event. They didn’t invoke the pop culture popularity of cowboy culture and lifestyle, taking a serious approach to a world-class competition. The crowd was impressive and engaged, and the opportunity to grow through content, partnerships, and lifestyle is clear, too. In an increasingly digital, AI world, the timeless nature of rodeo offers something special, taking people back to simpler times.
