Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

This year, Las Vegas has a good grip on the rodeo

2013 Wrangler NFR: Round 10

Tom Donoghue/DonoghuePhotography.com

Round 10 of the 2013 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo on Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013, at the Thomas & Mack Center at UNLV.

Click to enlarge photo

Karl Stressman at the Thomas & Mack Center on Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2013.

To quote one of the city’s great Wild West partners, Karl Stressman: “It’s been a rodeo, to say the least. It might have been the king of all rodeos.”

Stressman speaks from experience, as the proverbial head honcho of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the sanctioning body for the annual Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Celebrating its 30th year in Las Vegas, the NFR hits town Thursday and runs through Dec. 13 at the Thomas & Mack Center. It is expected again to sell out the venue’s 17,500 seats and funnel to the city upward of $90 million in nongaming revenue.

The rodeo away from the rodeo of which Stressman spoke unfolded last winter. For a few tense weeks in December and January, it seemed the NFR would uproot and head to a new venue in Osceola County, Fla. Rodeo promoter Las Vegas Events finally agreed to up the annual purse and sponsorship payment to the PRCA, offering $16.5 million annually to keep the event in Las Vegas through 2024.

A congenial and relieved Stressman spoke about the return of the NFR to Las Vegas:

Johnny Kats: For the first time in a long time, you’re not staging the rodeo with negotiations hanging over the event.

Karl Stressman: Yes. When I’m telling you I am looking forward to coming, I can’t wait. And that is a statement that would not have been made the past couple of years. … You can just sit down and drink a Coors or a Pendleton together and enjoy each other’s company and talk about how we invest the energy for the future of the Wrangler National Finals. We now have an opportunity to celebrate that anniversary and then plan for 2015 and how we make it bigger and better, which is huge job.

J.K.: What did the PRCA do to strengthen the NFR and its relationship with Las Vegas?

K.S.: The sheer fact that we had a number in our mind as to what we thought the value of the Wrangler National Final Rodeo was, and Vegas came to the table with those funds — that makes us want to participate at a bigger level.

J.K.: It’s already a wildly successful event now with 280 consecutive sellouts. One big negotiating point was the higher prize money, which kicks in next year, right?

K.S.: Yeah. This year, I believe it’s $6.35 million, if I’m not mistaken, and next year we go to $10 million. So, the impact on the rodeo industry that Vegas has invested in, with us as a partner, is phenomenal. That kind of money was never even heard of, in terms of $1 million a round, or $10 million in prize money. Each one of these individual participants gets a $10,000 bonus when they get there.

J.K.: How does the PRCA feel about the likelihood of spending the next 10 years at the Thomas & Mack Center with MGM Resorts building a new arena on the Strip?

K.S.: The LVE guys really have the control over moving that if the opportunity arises. I know the last time I spoke to LVE, the guys were in pretty serious negotiations with the Thomas & Mack. We’re outside the boundaries, and that is their call. We have all the confidence in the world that they’ll make the right call.

J.K.: You have a new television deal coming into play. What’s the future of the rodeo on TV?

K.S.: We’re on CBS Sports Network, which we announced last year. I know they will be pleased with the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in the first year they’ll have it. We have a second year in 2015, but we want to find a permanent home, and eventually, we should be geared to having at least one of our rounds on national TV. I’d love to see 2015 look like that. It would be phenomenal.

J.K.: Did you ever honestly believe you were going to uproot the rodeo from Las Vegas?

K.S.: You know, the last thing we wanted to do, the very last thing, on our board of directors, was to go anywhere and start again. Just to try to start a 30-year operation some place new is so difficult. I know they saw that even 30 years ago, when they came to Vegas. But I gotta tell you, we had long discussions about the possibilities of doing it. So were we prepared to leave? Yes sir, we were. Did we want to leave? No, we did not.

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