How to Increase Rodeo Revenue
Rodeo revenue comes from two primary sources: attendees and sponsors.
You can grow your attendee revenue in two ways: The first is to gain more paying spectators, and the second is to capture more money from those that sign up. Gaining more spectators will involve more effort, but may yield the better return on investment.
To attract more attendees and sponsors, you need to understand what they’re looking for in a rodeo. Attendees want a good show and a great time with friends and family. Sponsors, on the other hand, want to get your attendees’ attention, build their brand, and increase sales.
Below, we’ll cover many strategies you can use to grow both of your target markets – attendees and sponsors.
Start by working with your rodeo committee. They’ll bring creative ideas, helpful connections, and valuable skill sets.
Begin every year with a marketing plan and goals. Set top level goals for your rodeo as a whole and track the success of each marketing initiative.
You probably already have tried and true strategies for ticket sales like partnering with local businesses to sell tickets and organizing Rodeo Queen ticket sales competitions. You may even have established relationships with sponsors that you can renew for the next year.
Other ideas for adding new marketing strategies include,
- Add “How did you hear about this rodeo?” to your ticketing form questions
- Use distinct promo codes for each marketing campaign
- Track clicks and conversions on digital ads to identify your most effective ads and platforms
As you identify tactics that drive revenue and a good return on investment (ROI) for your race, put more money behind those strategies because they are the best advertising methods for your rodeo.
It’s easy to say selling more tickets grows your revenue. You need to develop and implement effective marketing and sales strategies. However, you may have a maximum number of attendees, so you’ll want to identify other opportunities for revenue growth beyond raising your prices. We’ll cover all of the ways you can boost ticket sales and increase attendee revenue in other ways.
The bedrock of any sales strategy is marketing. Develop multiple types of marketing strategies so you can connect with your audience however they consume information. To broaden your reach, create a marketing initiative in each of the categories below:
- Experience – Focused on the experience you offer at your rodeo. Includes referrals, performances, etc.
- Digital Marketing – Focused on online marketing. Includes paid ads, SEO, etc.
- Social Media – Focused on social media platforms. Includes influencers, paid ads, hash tags, etc.
- Partnership Marketing – Focused on partnerships with other organizations. Includes vendors, local businesses, working with other rodeo committees, etc.
- Print Media – Focused on more traditional marketing methods. Includes billboards, radio ads, press releases, fliers and posters, etc.
Key to successful marketing outreach is opening your ticket sales early. It takes time to build excitement and reach new audiences. Give yourself more time to sell out by opening ticket sales at least four months in advance. Let enthusiasm build for your rodeo, implement strategic price increases, and start selling out regularly.
Plus, you’ll start getting revenue sooner to pay for expenses.
Your marketing and sales strategy starts with the experience you offer at your rodeo. Focus on delivering a great experience and then leverage that to increase ticket sales.
Simplify Ticketing and Ensure Low FeesYour rodeo experience starts with ticket sales. It’s your chance to make a good first impression with a simple purchase process.
Look for an online ticketing form that is quick, easy, and straightforward. Choose a platform that doesn’t require attendees to create an account because this makes for a faster checkout process. You’ll also save time on customer support navigating the ticket purchase process since it’s easy. And, you’ll save time on customer support for viewing tickets and making allowable ticket changes because all of that information and capability is in the confirmation email.
Online fees also matter. Fees can vary widely in the market. Most don’t include the credit card processing fee. In contrast, Rodeo Ticket’s fee covers the credit card processing and merchant fees. Its fee is 4.97% + $1.25 per ticket.
Grow Your Rodeo Today.
Rodeos are family-friendly events. To further emphasize your efforts, incentivize referrals to encourage attendees to get friends and family to come, too.
Use Rodeo Ticket’s referral program feature to create and track your referral program. Once you’ve created your program, all of your ticket buyers will get an autogenerated, unique link to share with their friends and family. You can also use this tool to track ticket sales at local businesses and for Rodeo Queen ticket sales.
Set the amount of money you want to rebate per ticket sold through their unique referral link. Your attendees max out at the cost of their ticket order. You can also offer a discount to each person who buys tickets through the referral link.
Create your account to get started.
Offer More Than One PerformanceEach of your rodeo performances draws a different crowd. As new rodeo events become popular, like the rise in breakaway roping, consider adding another night to showcase those. Adding rodeo events helps widen the appeal of your rodeo and reach your audience.
You can even think beyond rodeo sports when considering other events to include as part of your rodeo. Dances and music concerts can draw big crowds. And, they bring in different demographics – some people aren’t into spectator sports, so offering an interactive event like a dance or concert will appeal to them.
The other advantage of adding events or performances helps you overcome the capacity limitation at your venue. If you’re filling your venue at your current performances, the easiest way to grow is by adding an event or performance.
Send an Email When You Open Ticket SalesMany rodeos are long-standing community traditions. You probably already have an email list for people who’ve come to your rodeo before. If that’s the case, let your past attendees know about your upcoming rodeo and other events with a quick email. This announcement builds on the memorable experience they’ve had at your rodeo and makes them want to come again.
Choose an attractive email design that reflects your brand. Be concise and engaging when describing your rodeo. Include clear call to action buttons to make it easy for people to buy tickets. Rodeo Ticket offers customizable email templates that you can use to make your emails shine.
In all of your emails, include links to your website, social media accounts, sponsor logos, and your ticketing page. Rodeo Ticket makes it easy to automatically include your logo in every email. You can also include social media account links and sponsor logos in your email footers.
Get Started.
Maybe it’s your first year with online ticketing, so you don’t have an email list. Get your ticketing page created quickly – even if you’re not ready to open ticket sales. You can let people sign up for an automated email notification when ticket sales open. It’s a quick and easy way to build your email list and deliver a positive experience to everyone who visits your closed ticketing page.
You can also reach out to local businesses, organizations, and clubs to see if they’re willing to announce your rodeo in their emails. You won’t have as much control over these emails, so you’ll want to focus your attention on the description of your rodeo and a clear invitation to get tickets.
Deliver a Great ExperienceYou’re working to attract a large audience with a variety of preferences and reasons for coming to your rodeo. Do your best to meet this variety of preferences with your rodeo. Focus your effort on what most of your attendees want.
Highlight your location. Think about unique characteristics of your arena: its history, recent upgrades, etc. You’ll also want to highlight the landscape, tourist attractions, and local businesses. Talk about what attendees can look forward to when they plan a trip to or an evening at your rodeo.
People love good food. Sell concessions at your rodeo – think ice cream, hot dogs, popcorn, soda, and alcoholic beverages. You could go further with pulled pork sandwiches or other ranch specialties.
Be well-organized, especially on rodeo day. Clear communication and efficiency improve the attendee experience at your rodeo.
Unfortunately, the other thing to prepare for on rodeo day is people showing up with scalped tickets. Have a plan for how you’ll handle these cases. A lot of these folks will think that they bought legitimate tickets. Of course, they haven’t. So, you need to decide how to break the news professionally and turn a negative experience into a positive one at the gate and box office.
After the rodeo is over, create a survey to get feedback from attendees. Questions to consider include:
- Rate the experience on a 5-star scale.
- Rate the organization of the rodeo on a 5-star scale.
- Rate the rodeo overall on a 5-star scale.
- How likely are you to come again?
- How likely are you to recommend this rodeo to friends and family?
Rodeo Ticket’s Post-Event Survey makes creating and sending a custom survey easy. Fully brand the form design and include all of the questions you need to ask.
Rodeo reviews are another great resource for further insight on what attendees like and dislike. Similarly, Rodeo Ticket makes it easy to collect reviews and publish them directly to your marketing page.
Learning more about your attendees will help you know what aspects to focus on to deliver an even better experience next year.
Create More Performances or EventsIf you’re a rodeo production company, consider organizing other rodeos in new cities. Some of the most successful rodeo production companies have enhanced their success and grown their revenue with this strategy.
When you have a great, successful rodeo in one city, other cities may enjoy it, too. The other locations may not be as close to home, but it is easier to replicate your rodeo because you’re not working from scratch anymore. You already have an email list, a brand, equipment, etc.
If opening up your rodeo in other markets yourself is unappealing, consider franchising your rodeo. In this case, you’ll make money from other rodeo organizers building on your brand.
The internet opened new ways to get people’s attention. Your digital marketing strategy starts with your website and includes all of the ways people can learn about your rodeo online.
Create a Rodeo WebsiteMany of your attendees will learn about your rodeo online. Google, Yahoo, and Bing tend to rank a rodeo website higher than a social media page or single webpage dedicated to your rodeo. Increasing your online visibility is the purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
You may already have a website, so you’ll want to connect it to your online ticket purchase page. Rodeo Ticket also offers other features to help bolster your rodeo’s SEO. You benefit from calendar listings on our rodeo calendar and state-specific rodeo calendars. We’re also integrated with external calendars, so a listing on our calendar adds your rodeo to these external calendars.
Having other reputable sites featuring your rodeo offers third-party validation online.
You’ll also enjoy a customizable marketing page that automatically links to your ticketing page. It also automatically links to your sponsor sales page, fundraising page, and registration page if you’re using those features.
Even more, you can collect and publish verified attendee reviews of your rodeo on your marketing page. Reviews are user-generated content, which Google prioritizes.
If you don’t already have your own website, you can create one on Rodeo Ticket. Website building and hosting is free when you use Rodeo Ticket to collect payments for tickets. If you have your own domain, you can use that instead of our free hosting.
On your website, include pages with rodeo details, rodeo history, an FAQ, and contact information for people with more questions.
As you develop content for these pages, include relevant keywords throughout it. Think of key words as searches people write into the Google search bar. Put the most valuable keywords in your page name and headings. Strike a balance between including keywords and writing for a human because overstuffing keywords negatively affects your rankings.
Using AI to generate content can be helpful, but be careful. Some search engines lower the rankings of pages that have just AI-produced content.
Consider adding a blog to your website to bolster your SEO strategy. As you’re planning for your blog, consider what information your participants and potential participants are looking for and common searches people make online.
For example, people may want to learn about rodeo sports, rodeo queen competitions, 4H programs, etc. Writing helpful content about these topics and others increases your chances of ranking high in Google search results and finding more new attendees for your rodeo.
Include relevant links to your registration page, homepage, and other blog posts to help people move from researcher to attendee.
You can also use your blog to negotiate guest article trades as you work to network your website with others through links. Guest posting is also advantageous because it expands your audience reach.
Buy Digital AdsYou can buy ads for specific search terms in Google and other search engines. Other websites offer display ads that you can pay for to increase your online visibility. You can also develop a retargeting strategy with these ads. Once someone has visited your site or clicked on one of your ads, they’ll see it again in other places they visit online.
Rodeo Ticket sells display ads on several of its pages, so you can highlight your rodeo to a highly interested audience. Plus, you can track impressions and clicks on your ad. If you use Rodeo Ticket for ticket sales, you can also track revenue generated by your ad.
Some websites offer sponsored blog posts, so you can pay for placement. It’s another way to increase your online presence and reach new audiences.
People connect on social media, which makes it a great place to reach your community and nearby communities to spread the word about your rodeo.
Create Buzz on Social MediaSocial media is a fast way to market your rodeo and engage with potential attendees. You want to stay top-of-mind. The more they think about your rodeo, the more they are discussing it with others.
Strategically choose your social media platforms based on your target audience – Facebook for Millennials and Gen X, Instagram for Millennials and Gen Z, TikTok for younger demographics.
Post content regularly. Announce updates to your rodeo, run polls on your swag designs, highlight your specialty act, announcer, clown, stock contractor, musical guest, etc. Create social media posts that get people excited to buy tickets to your rodeo.
Many people get rodeo tickets based on recommendations from friends or family members, so utilize social platforms to encourage attendees to spread word about your rodeo.
Rodeo Ticket makes it easy to encourage buzz on Facebook. You can offer discounts to participants who share your registration page from their Facebook account. This strategy also gets your registration page in front of more people and helps boost registrations.
Create an Official HashtagHashtags are a fun way for participants and potential participants to create some buzz around your brand and the event experience. When everyone knows what the official hashtag is, they can all post photos of their experiences with your event and easily see what others had to say about their experience at your rodeo.
Reach Out to InfluencersReach out to all of the cowboys and cowgirls competing at your rodeo. Ask them to post about your rodeo to their audiences to help you sell more tickets. Consider other influencers who can help you create social media buzz. Offer free tickets in exchange for their assistance.
Consider creating a promo code so influencers can offer a discount to their followers to incentivize more referrals.
Advertise on Social MediaYou can pay for advertisements on social media platforms. These ads can be effective ways to get your rodeo on people’s minds and can boost ticket sales. You can even retarget your ads to people who’ve visited your website.
Partnering with other rodeos and local businesses can help you expand your marketing reach. Remember that these deals tend to be reciprocal, so be sure you’re offering something valuable in return to your partners.
Form an Alliance with Other RodeosConsider different ways to work with rodeos and rodeo committees in your area. For example, you could trade emailing your attendee lists to advertise each other’s races. You could even swap marketing opportunities like logo placement or program ads.
Partner with Local Businesses on MarketingWork with local restaurants, retailers, and other businesses to creatively market your rodeo. Be sure that these efforts are mutually beneficial. You could pay the business a set fee for each ticket they sell. Or, you could pitch discounted rodeo tickets as a perk companies could offer their employees.
Grow Your Rodeo Today.
While advertising has moved to online and digital markets, print advertising can still be useful for drawing general attention to your race. Keep in mind that it is much harder to target ads through print media, and it’s difficult to track the return on investment.
Posting banners at busy intersections is probably the best investment for print advertising. Banners are relatively inexpensive. To place them, you just need to work with the local property owner. It can be free or you’ll pay a nominal fee.
Printing fliers and distributing them at other rodeos, rodeo-adjacent events, or Western stores is another useful print media strategy. You can also print posters to be hung at businesses or local bars. Testing newspaper advertising, billboards, magazine ads, and radio ads can also be useful.
Use your ticket sales data to identify good areas for billboards, newspaper ads, radio ads, etc. Rodeo Ticket offers a heat map that shows where the people coming to your rodeo live. Spend print advertising dollars in the areas where ticket purchases are high.
The biggest difficulty with print advertising is understanding the connection between your spend and ticket sales. As you develop your print media strategy, consider how you’ll measure success.
However, not all print media opportunities require a purchase. For example, issuing press releases is free. Write press releases to announce your rodeo, sponsorships, and partnerships with charities. Be sure to include links to your website and registration page.
Think about your existing attendees in a few ways:
- attendees who already have tickets
- people planning to get tickets
- past attendees who haven’t gotten tickets
You can adopt several strategies to drive more revenue from these participants through:
- strategic price increases
- added value
- sell merchandise & concessions
- donations
- more rodeos
Price increases help create a sense of urgency for making a purchase. Someone who is thinking about coming to your rodeo may make a decision sooner if they know a price increase is coming.
When you create your ticket pricing strategy, identify which day of the week you typically make the most ticket sales. Choose that day as the last day before your price increases.
You should also time price increases with paydays and holidays like Black Friday. If people have money and are shopping, it’s an advantageous tie-in for your sales strategy. Advertise your price increases via email, social media, and a countdown on your ticket sales page.
People are willing to pay more when you add value. For example, creating a VIP experience or selling the best seats at a higher price adds value. You can charge more for a better seat or for a VIP experience. Some of your attendees are focused on price. However, others are happy to pay more for an elevated experience.
Merchandise is an excellent revenue stream because it doubles as marketing. When people wear your gear, the community sees your logo and rodeo name all over the place.
You can sell merchandise online, in-person at your rodeo, and in your ticket-purchase pathway with Rodeo Ticket’s integrated system. You can track all of your inventory and order fulfillment from one place.
Concessions are another great source of revenue on rodeo day. People enjoy a good show with snacks and beverages. Offer snacks like popcorn, chips, and french fries. Add treats like ice cream, cookies, and candy. It’s even nice to offer something more substantive like hot dogs, corn dogs, or sandwiches. Of course, you should also consider offering water, soda, and alcohol.
When you’re working with a partner charity or trying to improve your arena, gathering donations is a key part of your success. Set a goal for how much money you want to raise at your rodeo. Make your goal public and track progress towards meeting it.
Ask people to include a donation with their ticket order. You can also offer free tickets to people who meet certain fundraising goals or ask attendees to create fundraising teams.
Rodeo Ticket’s software makes it easy to automatically create a dedicated fundraising page for your partner charities that tracks progress towards goals. From this page, people can make donations and even create their own fundraising teams to help meet the goal. It’s also easy to include an option to donate when people buy tickets.
Once you’ve delivered an excellent rodeo experience, consider creating a new rodeo. Having a second and even third rodeo during the year keeps your audience engaged throughout the year, and helps you drive more revenue from your participants.
Vendors and sponsors are the other key source of revenue for your rodeo. Vendors and sponsors are typically interested in marketing and sales opportunities at your event. You’ll find it easier to align interests with companies focused on Western lifestyle and agriculture.
Think about Western clothing brands, leather crafts, tractors, animal feed, veterinary services, etc. Other organizations like colleges, banks, and grocery stores are interested in supporting rodeos in their communities, too.
Make an extensive list of all of the marketing opportunities at your rodeo. For example:
- Ads in the rodeo program
- Arena signs and banners
- Social media posts
- Rodeo tickets
- Announcer ads
- Logo placement on bibs, emails, website, etc.
Next, outline the sponsorship levels, what benefits are included in each package, pricing, and how many sponsorships are available at each level.
Once you have your packages created, put together a document that lists the pricing and benefits of sponsorship. The more details you can include about the size and demographics of your rodeo’s participants and attendees, the easier it will be to sell sponsorship packages.
With Rodeo Ticket’s software, you can create an online sponsor sales page where sponsors can pay for their sponsorship online or request an invoice from you.
Sell Sponsors.
After you’ve made a list of every marketing opportunity at your event, identify which ones are reserved for sponsors and which ones you’re willing to sell to vendors item by item.
Selling marketing and sales opportunities separately helps you open another source of revenue for your rodeo. Not every company has the marketing budget to be a sponsor and are still interested in marketing and even being at your event.
Creating a program for your rodeo is a great advertising opportunity for your sponsors and vendors. You can sell ads of different sizes – ¼ of a page to a full page. Sizing allows you to offer different pricing and makes it easier for companies to fit working with your rodeo in their budget.
It takes some extra work, but the advertising revenue from it is beneficial.
Rodeo Ticket offers a full suite of tools to help you sell more tickets, drive revenue from merchandise and concessions, and make managing your sponsor program a breeze. Our easy-to-use online rodeo ticketing system will help you save time and make more money. We even make it easy to automate and track your growth strategies!
