The future and business of Western horse sports with experts, judges, and industry veterans Brian Dygert and Jody Brainard from The Cowboy Office.
The Cowboy Office is a podcast about maturing the Western horse sports space.
Be sure to listen to this episode and follow The Cowboy Office on your favorite podcast platform.
🐴 This episode is brought to you by Pegasus, the first modern event management system that makes it easy to host and run equestrian events. Sign up for early access at www.thepegasus.app.
Be sure to follow Pegasus on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and subscribe to The Oxer, the #1 weekly newsletter for global equestrian industry happenings. 🗞️
The future and business of Western horse sports with experts, judges, and industry veterans Brian Dygert and Jody Brainard from The Cowboy Office.
The Cowboy Office is a podcast about maturing the Western horse sports space.
Be sure to listen to this episode and follow The Cowboy Office on your favorite podcast platform.
🐴 This episode is brought to you by Pegasus, the first modern event management system that makes it easy to host and run equestrian events. Sign up for early access at www.thepegasus.app.
Be sure to follow Pegasus on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and subscribe to The Oxer, the #1 weekly newsletter for global equestrian industry happenings. 🗞️
I mean, this whole conversation assumes that the only way to make horse shows more profitable is to get more spectators or get more of the local community into it, right? So if we just go back to where this podcast started, which is that the average Western horse show is breaking even, if not losing money, right, like that's? The goal isn't to make this a profitable, self-fulfilling business. The goal is to make sure we don't lose money every time we run this horse show, which means that the people running it are running it out of the goodness of their heart and they're running it because it's good for the sport, not because they're getting any reward for it. Hi, everyone.
Noah:My name is Noah Levy and I'm the producer of our Peckasus podcast, hosted by our founders Sam Baines and Jen Tankle. On today's show, we are hosting Brian Diger and Jody Brainard of the Cowboy Office, a podcast about all there is to Western disciplines and where we are in the equestrian world. Brian and Jody have been lifelong Cowboys and have almost a century's worth of combined experience, so you'll definitely not want to miss this one. Keep your ears out and your heels down. All right, let's get into it.
Sam:So for our listeners, we've got Brian and Jody here from the Cowboy Office podcast and we're here at Peckasus today. We want to go into detail about your guys story and why you started the podcast and then my memory serves me correctly for the reasons you started the podcast also then looking at the health of the equestrian industry and specifically the Western equestrian industry in America in general. Because here at Peckasus we want to look at the macroeconomic picture of things and talking about where the industry is going in the future and the health of it now and what that means in terms of what we can do at a commercial level or a strategic level to try and improve things into the future. So if you guys I'm not sure which one of you wants to go first, but if one of you can tell the audience your backgrounds, who you are and, most importantly, like what was it that made you guys decide that you wanted to start the Cowboy Office, with what mission?
Jody:W ell, you know what I'm going to go first, because this is Brian's baby and he's he can get way more into detail than I can. Briefly, a little background on myself. I'm a third generation horseman and grown up in the horse business. I've been a coach and a trainer and a showman and whatever else that entails to be in the business for 45 plus years and I've seen lots of things happen in this business and kind of on the in between, semi-retired and all the way retired and still looking for something to do to like you are trying to do, I think, is to try and make this, try and make this better than it is right now. So anyway, and Brian is the one that approached me and said hey, you know what? Let's do a podcast and let's try to reach some outside people and share some knowledge. Is that right, Brian?
Brian:Yes, simply, you know mine is similar. I come from a long history of horsemen. I've made my living in the horse business as well, but my path and what I did in the horse business was a little bit different. I've known Jody most of my adult life and so we're both, on this last chapter, semi-retired, call it whatever you want and the point was it was my idea. I reached out to Jody, our expertise and where Jody share a lot of common expertise he's a far superior horseman than I am but where we shared expertise was in officiating and we spent 20, 30 years not only officiating in the field but then teaching officials how to be good officials and all the research with how do you have an officiating system for a horse sport, competition and minimize subjectivity, all of that kind of stuff. So we've spent over 30 years researching, doing studying that stuff. That's the common denominator.
Brian:The cowboy office was my basic idea, which and I reached out to Jody because we're lifetime friends which was how do we leave the industry better? And our way of doing it was using modern technology to leave a library of history and experiences already learned so that the next group at least has access to some of that. That was the bottom line, and the other part is there's no harm with more people getting. I've always said this the horse industry has been great, but it talks to itself. One of the weaknesses is how does the general population get exposed to the modern horse industry? So we can do two things with cowboy office leave it better and expose more to it.
Sam:I think you mentioned this when we first met, but we also, jen. I went back through some of your guys podcast that you've got to date and my assessment of where you're kind of at in life is that you spent the last so many decades essentially focusing on a day-to-day basis in the minutiae of riding, in training, in officiating, you're in the operations. You haven't really had an opportunity to stick your head out of the water and take a breath and look down upon the industry from a strategic level. But now that you're at that point, you've got this podcast in which you want to basically stop being involved in day-to-day operations and start looking at okay, well, what's the next generation going to experience?
Sam:What are some of the pain points that we've been through that we can improve upon into the future? What are some of the things we can steal from other sports that we can bring into this sport to make it financially more viable? What is something we can do to get more youth into the sport? Try and leave it in a better state for the next generation to kind of move it forward. Is that a pretty fair assessment?
Jody:Great one. That's a pretty fair assessment.
Sam:That's it. Fantastic On that point, because this is our podcast interviewing you guys and we predominantly our experience. Jen grew up riding the English riding. I've spent the majority of my time in the equestrian industry, which isn't a huge amount of time, but speaking majoratively with key stakeholders in the English riding world. What we'd love to talk about, then, is today spend time focusing on like well, what is the current state of the Western industry and the Western disciplines and sports?
Sam:The best place I'd love to start is looking at the financial health of a Western equestrian competition Like set that up in the English world.
Sam:I would say that outside of your main discipline, of the hunter-jumper world, which makes up probably 70% of all English equestrian competitions, outside of the hunter-jumper industry, the average horse show in the other disciplines makes a few thousand dollars profit per show, if not loses money, but they continue to be run because the people who run them do it for the passion, they do it for the community and they understand that they're not going to make money, that they're never going to become rich doing it.
Sam:They understand they might go through some financial strain to run it, but it's important for the health of the sport and for the future generations. Now that cohort of people running those shows. They are getting older and they are getting to the point of retiring, which calls into the question of are the next generation going to want to take over and take on that for lack of a better term that responsibility and that burden? Is the Western world the same? Is there one discipline that seems to have it financially figured out, but the other one seemed to run at a loss? Or is it set up completely differently, where it actually is a relatively good business model and it just needs to be scale?
Jody:That's interesting. We did a show with a very intelligent lady from California named Marnie Langer. That was a long time acquaintance of Brian's and he introduced me to her and we had much of the same discussion. And the Western industry is at the upper end, an excellent shape and almost everything. You can go to the National Cutting Horse Association, the Raining Horse Association, the NSBA, any of those at the top end. It's in great shape, trickling down. You know, kind of like you said, how do we bring more youth into this? How do we continue to have some growth? That's one of the big questions that I have about the future and the next generation.
Brian:The simple answer and Jody's correct. But Sam and Jen, the simple answer is no. The business model is not healthy. Do Western disciplines and the Jody's correct? They're doing really well. We used to dream about where they now are. But is event production on the Western side of the industry making money? The answer is no. They are working really hard to balance or break even. And your question of where's the next generation and who's going to be the next crew to work and produce, yet to be seen. But the culture in the Western industry is somebody will do it, always has been, always will be. Don't need to worry about it. That's our culture.
Brian:And the point of the story is, and the difference in horse production in the Western side versus the English side is ours is largely dependent upon added money. And added money is our purse money and we built purses as a reward coming out of the modern horse show world Jumpers and your grand prix would have that too, but we have that all the way down to the entry level. So your entry level rookies are competing for some prize check. It might be 10 bucks, might be a hundred bucks. Now they're competing for hundreds of thousands. But the purse money is the financial liability in the business model to event production and they are working their tails off to break even. So I would have my points of business concern in that regard.
Brian:But the Cowboys way has always been somebody will be there, somebody will do it. When the horse is in trouble, when the Cowboys in trouble, somebody will step in and help, and that's been true in our lifetime. So we kind of sit on those laurels. Where does the event industry go on our side of the industry is yet to be seen. But I would tell you we're in a little bit of an identity crisis and it comes from our governing bodies, and the point is they're trying our horse shows. The identity crisis is transforming a horse show into a sporting event that is spectator friendly. That's the spot that we're in right now. Jumpers had figured that out, dressage had figured it out, cross country has figured it out. You guys had the precipitous of Olympic sports that helped you to figure out those things over history, where the Cowboys are just at the beginning of figuring out how to take the high end competition and make it spectator friendly. And that transformation, coming down to the horse shows, is where we are now.
Jen:When we were in Fort Worth for a few months last year we went to a few rodeos and there were I mean, it was a sold out crowd and there were so many different disciplines that we saw and they gave a lot of airtime to the vendors and the sponsors. They stopped the show, they brought out the tracks. I was full Americana and the crowd loved it and you know brands really loved it too. So from the English world it's just a little bit different, right? Because the hunter jumpers there's so many different rings, it goes on all day.
Jen:Venting is the adrenaline rush and I think they are doing a really exceptional job at attracting people to cross country and dressage is typically in one spot. But it just seems like from the English world, looking in at the Western world, that you all have it together, especially with Yellowstone. For us it was like wow, you have the sold out crowd, the sold out arena, you've got the brands that seem very happy. So is that not necessarily the case? Is the Western world struggling to bring in more spectators and bring in more brands and vendors?
Brian:The simple answer is yes. Yes, it's struggling. And let me give you the rest of the story, or the detail in what you're talking about. Rodeo is one of the advanced disciplines of the cowboy modernized sport. We all come from the same spot. The fundamental skills in the cowboy way are pretty much the same how good of a roper, how good of a horseman, all those kinds of things that Rodeo advanced itself faster than all the other disciplines. What Rodeo has been able to figure out and I would tell you they're doing a phenomenal job social license to operate.
Brian:If you look at the US culture, why is Rodeo still predominantly in the Western US and less predominantly in the Eastern US? That's a culture shift period. But what Rodeo has done a phenomenal job at is tending to the various sectors of their participants and membership, all the way down to. You have high school Rodeo teams. So well, you take the rest of the modern horse industry and we're not in the high schools. We're not there. Should you have horse riding in today's high schools? Yeah, you should.
Brian:So Rodeo is just one of the cowboy segments. All the other advanced. I don't care if you're a roper, a cutter, a rainer, a cow horse. Those are all advanced skills and can you go to any of those places? Yes, rodeo as a discipline has gone through many hard trials, including cultural pressure, and they've done a phenomenal job at doing that, and what they've identified is what you're talking about when you get through it Rodeo is an entertainment piece. The rest of us in the upper end of the horse world haven't identified that yet and don't pay respect to putting on a high level competition to a high valued fan or audience.
Sam:So Brian, when you say Rodeo, you're not going to be a roger. What do you exactly are you talking about? And the reason I asked that question is so Virginia and I, again, like we aren't as experienced in the Western world, so we may be using what we may be talking about, maybe wrong, but when we went to a rodeo as opposed to the discipline of rodeo the reason we were watching it and we were like, oh, the Western world has this figured out. Is that, rather than being like, okay, this is a dressage competition or this is a jumping competition, or this is an eventing or a driving competition, it was like, oh, we've got bowel racing, we've got roping, we've got cutting, and they're all taking place one after the other in a single arena.
Sam:So they basically created a portfolio of disciplines in one event that takes place in a single small area that everyone can sit around and constantly have their attention peaked. Could everything's changing so quickly? And that creates such a more interesting spectator sport and a more engaging experience to spectators. And that is something you can build a spectator crowd around, that is something you can sell beer at, that is something you can have sponsors at. So when you say rodeo, is that what you're talking about, or are you talking about just the part of like, actually like riding a bucking bronco?
Brian:No, rodeo is the activity of what you just described. The skill inside rodeo.
Brian:Barrel racers is one of those skills, ropers is one of those skills. Cutters, rainers and cow horses have just been introduced to the activity of rodeo. Two months ago at the American Rodeo and Performance Horseman that Teton Ridge put on in Arlington, texas. They're doing what you're talking about, which is building a cowboy, an event that highlights all of them to an audience. They're the first ones to do it, so they're actually they're combining rodeo and other cowboy advanced disciplines into one. They're doing what you're talking about. Where Jodi and I came from, we could have gone down the professional rodeo path if we wanted to. We went down the professional raining horse path. We got very focused on training, showing, officiating, buying and selling raining horses. Raining horses are one of the ranch horse.
Noah:Hey, are you an equestrian event organizer looking to put on your next clinic or schooling show? Pegasus is about to release its new event management system, which is a modern platform that makes it easy to accept entry registrations, receive digital signatures for your event paperwork, as well as manage the logistics and scheduling of your event. You can even digitally showcase your vendors and sponsors, so that brands have much better visibility than the traditional logo on a fence. Pegasus has made it easy to run an event from start to finish, with features designed for everyone involved, especially for riders, who can now easily register and receive real time updates. Gone are the days of running your event through Facebook or dated tech from the 90s. Check out the launch of the Pegasus event management system at wwwthepegasusapp. That is wwwthepegasusapp.
Sam:Right. So does that mean that in the Western world a lot of the other disciplines right that are very focused raining, cutting, et cetera? Are you saying that historically they, for lack of a better term, look down upon rodeo as maybe like, not such a professional skill, like haven't given us credit where credit's due?
Brian:No no. The answer is why is the industry in the situation that it's in? That's basically the question you're asking.
Brian:The answer is every discipline got focused on what they wanted 50 years ago. So the rainers wanted what the rainers wanted. The cutters wanted what the cutters wanted Today's time. You got roping. You got a large, large roping's one of the fastest growing skills in the cowboy side of the industry. There's a lot of reasons. We could talk a whole show on that, but ropers are one of the skills in rodeo. The raining horse, the raining cow horse, cutting horse same horse is the pickup horse in rodeo same thing. But the rainers, as a discipline and a sport, wanted more in what they wanted. The cutters wanted more in what they wanted and the cow horses wanted more in what they wanted and the ropers wanted more in what they wanted. So that's what created all of the disciplines. They got focused on what they wanted and I would say that the English world is not any different.
Brian:You've got them all. It's multiple spokes and what I would tell you as a horse world. You got a lot of spokes in the horse world that do not come back to the same hub and there lies a piece of our complexity and quandary. If we could hub it in the horse world and create sporting events that could attract, can you put on advanced horse events to an audience, the answer is yes, are we yet? No, even the jumpers. They're on CBS, but their presentation to an audience, I would tell you, is poor. If you change the presentation and get focused on what you're doing, we still rodeo talks to the audience. The horse competition world is still talking to the horse exhibitor. How's that?
Jen:I think my English background is bleeding through, but I will say that everyone can attest to. Is Yellowstone made cowboy cool again? I know that you guys talk about that a lot on your podcast too, and so I guess one thing I'm an inventor. I saw that and I thought, wow, these cowboys are onto something. This looks like a lot of fun, and so I took a reigning lesson down in Ocala, florida. But for the average person who they are in English disciplined rider and they are watching Yellowstone and they think they've got the kind of horse or have access to the kind of horse that would be able to do some kind of Western disciplines, whether that's raining or cutting or bale racing, whatever it might be what would be your recommendations or suggestions to get started, like, where do they go? How do they dabble in the Western world?
Jody:Well, first of all, depending on what they wanna do and I might just step back just a second Part of the reason that rodeo is such an entertaining sport that every kid that grew up in and like I mean high school rodeo and the bulls and the buck and horse thing and all that kind of stuff. And you very quickly find out that you're not gonna be good enough to make a living at it. And that's when you change and say, okay, raining horse, that's a lot safer way to make a living, but it's exciting to watch and it would kind of be like steeple chase. If you've never seen one of those before, would you rather watch that. Or a dressage ring If you didn't know anything about the horses. You know what I mean. It's like the steeple chase has got the element of danger. It's fast and you think that people are crazy that are doing it right. So I mean, but as far as the contact, if you wanna get started in a Western sport and you watch Yellowstone and a lot of people have I think that lots of horse trainers have got calls.
Jody:I think most of those associations if it's the National Raining Horse Association they post a trainer's list and that's where you would oh, you would find one closest to the trainers in your state. If you're from Texas and you've never ridden a horse before, you'd look up the National Raining Horse Association. Find a trainer that's close to you, give them a call and they'll help you, believe me. So I think the associations themselves. If you can access them online, that would be where you would. That would be where you start.
Brian:Almost every state's got a state association that's an affiliate to the national it's governing body structure. Same thing with the USCF. So you could look up in your state. The NRHA would be the national. They'll tell you some state affiliates. You could look in your state and then most of them have websites and you'll find professionals directories and so you could pretty easily find one in any general area and that's where you would start.
Jen:We just got about the raining lesson because it was a friend down the street, but going to the governing bodies website sounds like a really good place to start. And with the Yellowstone Effect, because I know it's something that you've probably heard about at time yourselves, but certainly the English world has too. Is it true from what you're seeing that the numbers really have exponentially increased in competitions and raining horse purchases? Is the legend real? I mean, is the Western world increasing and people coming in droves far more than the English world is, because of Yellowstone?
Brian:We don't know on numbers yet. The American Horse Council is out doing its five year industry standard study now, which we'll know by the end of the year. That'll tell us as an industry, yes, yes, the cowboy side of the. Are they breeding more horses in the last two years than they were for the last? Yes, but it's a small number. Is it a significant uptick in membership activity and horse volume? I would say no, it's not significant.
Brian:So if you looked at us, you know now what has happened. Has the economics increased? Yes, our prize money, our show production has taken a significant step up and I've got data to support this stuff. You know the prize earnings on the advanced disciplines cow, horse cutting, raining in the last three years is significant. It's like 30 to 35% higher than history. So economics is up in the competition side True Is that starting to see an influx of the new incoming professional? And what does all the rest yet to be seen? Cause we don't have those numbers yet. The rest of the answer is where is you're right? Yellowstone made cowboy cool in the 21st century, yes, and what's happening is cowboy and horses is becoming a common term. Now, when Jody and I go through the airport, somebody wants to talk to us. Four years ago we were like we were weirdos. Now they go cause we're like cowboys, so we gotta be associated with it, we gotta know. So they've got curiosity. So what's happened is you've created general interest from the general population.
Sam:This comes back right to the point we're talking about, which is the health of horse shows and the competition infrastructure. So if there's been an uptick in interest and there's been an uptick of economics, how is it possible I think you had this opinion that it's been a major uptick in economics in the industry but simultaneously, horse shows are limping along and not doing very well? Does that tell us a little bit about the fact of, like, there's been this huge growth in interest and there's this huge growth in brands that want to be associated with and sponsorship deals that already are done, but the infrastructure hasn't really been there to capture all that extra interest in terms of getting people physically into the sport and competing in events and buying stalls at events and all that sort of stuff.
Brian:My answer would be yes, you're 100% correct. It's easy to increase money circulating in any given activity if you have it, and that's what we're seeing. So how does the economics in the cowboy sports increase by offering advanced purse money? Where does that purse money come from? You have to look at that. And where does the purse money for all the professional sports come from? Well, fundamentally the answer to that is from fan consumption, and a lot of that in today's time, fan consumption is coming from broadcasting rights. Where does a lot of the money come from? That is paying professionals that go down to a million dollar contracts. I don't care what sport you're talking about, it's fundamentally coming from the outside fan consumption into the industry, which makes an industry create wealth.
Brian:We're not there yet. None of us are. That's part of my identity crisis part, because are we at the beginning of that and starting to look at how that figures? I would tell you the American rodeo and American performance horsemen that just happened in Arlington. The run for the million that they created in Vegas started with raining. Now has raining cow horse and this year we'll have cutting, which is Taylor Sheridan's creation, which he's the creator of Yellowstone. What has he done? Taken a lot of those resources from create and a great entertainment movie and applied them into real things. That's what he's doing, which is great. Are those events making net profits? I would question that yet, but they are. They're probably close to it, and so that's the beginning of what you're seeing, can they probably? And then how do you begin to scale that down? The industry that's where we're, that's where we are, but we're at the beginning as an industry.
Jen:Do you think show jumping had the place there in the run for the million? It's already incorporating these other disciplines in the cowboy world, but could we see some English disciplines that are in arenas and more interesting, exciting kind of slip their way in there as well in the future?
Brian:The answer is yes. Are there many advanced disciplines that, at the top end, would be spectator friendly? I can make Josiah spectator friendly. I can not 20 of them, but I can make some of them because it's about and here's the answer. The answer to your question, in my view, is absolutely yes. Horse sports can be exciting to an audience. They're not yet because we don't present them to an audience, so the audience is not engaged. When Jody talked about, they got to be crazy. Steeple chase. You can have an assemblance to running, you know, on a almost bareback horse at 35 to 38 miles an hour. Yes, that's pretty wild and crazy. What do we have that? They don't have the emotional bond between horse and rider. What we got to do is present that to an audience. And endurance is pretty cool. Endurance has the hurdles that golf had and I would tell you golf is the best study for cross country and endurance, which is how do you take the highlights to it and present it to an audience? And there's the goal.
Jody:I think, just to add to that very quickly, brian said something really important when he talked about numbers and that's tremendously important because if you think about what the American did with five Reigners and five Cutters and five Cowhorses and the run for a million is 15 head, you know we're used to seeing these massive classes and shows with 150 in it and you're like, oh my gosh, if you're even an official at it, you're praying that it gets over soon because you're exhausted after 15 hours worth of work. But five head, 10 head, like a two hour show of the best. Everybody can watch that. To answer your question, jen jumping well, I mean, when I was young we used to love to go to the World Show and watch the jumping finals, especially when they put those last horses on the clock. That's something that everyone could understand and it was exciting as heck because whoever got over them the fastest without knocking one down one, and that was fun to watch. I mean the Colosseum would be full.
Jen:Also being able to have something, a combination of. You want the best, you want it to be a shorter duration, but I suppose that kind of called into question, if you will. What about these events like the West, the thermals, these long series where it's really a long endurance game for the riders and the family that are coming to support it? It's not something that a spectator is going to want to necessarily camp out on a Wednesday and watch, right? So is it just one of those things that the industry might just have to accept, where, if you're going to come and you're an adult amateur and you're riding, you're just going to simply go and compete amongst your crowd and it's not necessarily going to bring in the spectators. But as long as we're putting on these events, that does connect the equestrian world with the outside world, that's the best we can do and that's what we can do to attract outside brands to our equestrian industry.
Brian:The simple answer is yes. That's the identity crisis. I would tell you what you talked about is can those circuits, tournaments, call them whatever you want, but those are large circuits. In the horse world we have them too. What they're doing is trying to put on the best horseshow to attract the most exhibitors, which are exhibitor based. That's fine. All sports have it. That's fine. Let them. Does that? Do those circuits have to put on grand priests stuff and all the rest of that? No. Do they have to attract an audience? No. Are they self sustainable? Yes. Can you make money with them? Yes. What do you have to do? Be business smart, which is keep your liabilities down.
Brian:And now in our world, what it means, I could put on a large stock horse circuit, but the added money is going to come way down if I want to make money, make money and provide a service for the exhibitor. Those exhibitors are actually going through the trials of developing skills. Could we as an industry and you got all of them, from officials to show management to all the rest of that stuff If we were smarter as an industry, we would be using those as very chronological steps in the industry and everybody should be getting paid well for their services, in a way you go. Should, today's time, have gatekeepers that are making $75, $85 a day to open and close the gate and make sure that the entry is going through and balanced to the no? That's like obscene, but it's because we've been doing it for 25 years. We think that it's normal. So I just use it as a dorky example.
Brian:Yes, there's different places in our industry where we're not Jen. As an industry, we're trying to do all of our horse events. We're trying to do the same thing. They're number one, volume base. They're number two, exhibitor driven, and then number three. They are trying to balance their books, but they are providing an exhibitor service. That's it. They are not events that are focused on new revenue streams and having an audience. They're not supporting events.
Sam:Yet why isn't enough. I mean, there is no shortage of equestrian brands trying to sell equestrian products to equestrians. Right, like, yes, is it nice to have a consumer luxury brand come in on top and put up $200,000 of prize purse like Rolex or something? Yeah, absolutely. But the thing about the equestrian world is like, despite the fact that most people who live in metropolitan centers, they don't think of the equestrian industry being a big industry because they live in the city. They don't see everyone else who doesn't live in the city.
Sam:But then the last 2017 American Horse Council economic study said that there was one in three horses. There was a horse enthusiast in one in three families and there were 7.2 million horses in America. Right, let's just say you've got. If that one in three families is over 100 million people, let's say, 20% of them actually are not just an enthusiast who supports the idea of horses in ID, but actually is interested in horses and actually takes some steps to be actively involved in it. So that gives you about 20 million 30 million people. That's quite a lot. That's a relatively big consumer base for horse shows to make money from registrations, from equestrian brands to be able to sell products to, from boots to helmets, etc. What are we getting wrong? That, even if we were just a self-serving ecosystem and we didn't interact with the outside world, what are we getting wrong? That there isn't enough money flowing through it or it isn't getting through to the right people to make this work.
Brian:There's a couple things I'm not sure it's about getting wrong, as much as it might be barriers or hurdles, and one of it is fundamental liability. And the point is what you're talking about, and that's what Taylor did with Yellowstone, because your question is actually very complex. When you look at the industry, are there 30% of the American population? Hey, one in three, you're correct, which is a large number. What did Yellowstone do is create a product that is a very cool story, making Cowboy cool again, and sold that to a vast population. He did it Absolutely. Now what do you do with the rest of that? And how does an industry get itself prepared? How do you make it more readily accessible? How do you have every town have a community horse arena where people can go ride, gather up, learn things, all that kind? I mean every community's got a baseball field, the soccer field and a park of some sort. I live in Scottsdale, arizona. I was shocked. It's an incorporated city. We have livestock in an incorporated city. To my knowledge, there's only two cities in the country that allow that. That's not normal. Okay, fine, I'm not trying to pick on all of those, but I use it as an example. Now, scottsdale does have horse arena as part of their public park trail system. They're very different than Westworld, which is a major event venue, but if every region in the country had things similar to that, you would see modern civilization adapt to that accordingly. How do you get that accomplished? I'm not sure.
Brian:I'm going to use race horses as a little bit of my case study, because the single biggest thing that the racehorse industry has been talking about for the last 10 plus years is that the racehorse industry is all governed at the state level. So when you race horses in California, it's different than the regulation in Arizona and it's different than Texas and it's different than Kentucky and it's different than New York, because every state's got some different rules and rules. What the racehorse industry said to the US Congress was help us have what they wanted it federalized, they wanted it standardized, they wanted a commissioner of racing so that minimum standards of racing on a national level would be the same and then states could adapt accordingly. And specifically I'm talking about some of the rules and regs, but it was drugs and medication use, because those rules get modified per state. If I use that as an industry example to your question, sam, we're in a similar spot when you look at it from disciplines and disciplines and breeds.
Brian:You got the AQHA. That's the largest breed on the planet, and the USEF, that's the largest membership organization that covers breeds and disciplines. That's where it gets gray and convoluted. I'm not saying that one needs to be the other, but the AQHA is a breed function but is also involved with discipline, production records, et cetera. You got NCHA, nrca, nrha, nspa I go down all the acronyms. They're independent orgs that are focused on what they're focused on. You got an event like the American Performance Horsemen that they don't care about the governance. I'm not trying to speak for them. What they're doing is putting a platform of high level competition in front of a new audience, and that, I think, is phenomenal, which is what Jen was talking about.
Brian:Can other horse sports do that? Yes, can other disciplines? Could we do that? The world equestrian games would have been the closest example. But is there a spot for some of that in today's entertainment sports thing? I'd say yes. And technology what do we know in today's industry? Traditional television is going bye-bye. It is consumer by demand. You can go get it when you want. Digital publishing platforms is now the way they're going. We in the horse world could 100% capitalize on that if we want to.
Jen:You bring up a really good point about the states. My brother actually lives in Phoenix and he's always setting me screenshots of what's going on on the local news. They're always promoting Westworld and Scottsdale. It seems like every single week there is an event that the news is promoting to their audience For these areas that do have a big equestrian scene, but there is a bit of a disconnect between that scene and the local audience and the local population. Could it be as simple as going to the local news and having that relationship and partnership established so that they too can promote the local events? I think it's safe to say that there's a pretty thriving equestrian scene across the United States. Of course there are certain mechas and certain hubs. You're going to find horses and horse people no matter where you are. Even here in San Francisco. It's remarkable how many people I've met that have a thorough run off the track down in Palo Alto. Could that be a good first step? Is that something that you've seen firsthand in Scottsdale?
Brian:Simple answer is yes. Yes, it's the first step. The rest of the answer is why doesn't it happen more? Because it takes work and you've got to put resources to it. Your average horse event is focused on getting balanced. They don't have the resources yet, especially when you talk about media and promotion. Again, they're putting on an event to an exhibitor, not to an additional new revenue stream, which would be an audience. If we had more ticketed events. If you did programming in horse shows to make a portion of your, could some of those circuits have one or two evenings that are programmed for an audience? Yeah, you could. They don't, but they're good.
Sam:I mean this whole conversation assumes that the only way to make horse shows more profitable is to get more spectators or get more of the local community into it. Right, so we just go back to where this podcast started, which is that Western horse shows the average Western horse show is breaking even, if not losing money. Right, like that's. The goal isn't to make this a profitable, self-fulfilling business. The goal is to make sure we don't lose money every time we run this horse show, which means that the people running it are running it out of the goodness of their heart and they're running it because it's good for the sport, not because they're getting any reward for it. So why are Western horse sports not making it? Why are Western question of competitions not making money?
Sam:It gives it a case of like in the English world, for example. They make the majority of their money out of the store fees and Doesn't matter how cheap a horse show manager tries to make a registration fee. The people competing. Complainment is too much, right. So they've got this problem, which is like there's only so much money we can charge our clients just about in our horse show, so they're scared to up the fees and doesn't know what they do. They just end up and then you've got so many fixed costs. Now you've got to have an ambulance on site, especially if you're a licensed event, if five people turn up or a hundred people turn up, the fixed cost to the same. Essentially, this is accent problem in the Western world. It's just like there's too many fixed costs and people don't charge enough registration fees.
Jody:Brian, I'll take a short one at this and you can add to it because nobody's put on more events than you have, but it's. It's not exactly true that horse shows aren't making money, because some of them are and someone make a great deal of money. I mean a small association here that has one show per year and it probably banks close to a hundred thousand in the one horse show. Just because the stall fees the number of horses that come when we put on some shows in the past almost everybody that's in it before the local Associations grow it was stall fees are one way to make money.
Jody:Brian and I have tackled this for years. They call them judges fees, right? Well, they may pay your judges twenty five hundred dollars a day and they'll do 15,000 or twenty thousand dollars in judges fees per day in what they charge the exhibitors. So that's a way that they balance and they put that money in their pocket or they add it back into their classes and practice times. So when they charge people to practice right, I mean they charge them fifty dollars for three minutes of practice time a week before the show and they make huge amounts of money Doing that because people want to practice to train.
Jody:So there is some profit that's made and some, some of the management groups are that are lucky enough to have the living hotbeds of activity or have lots of people come to them. They do make money. There's some of the privately owned Associates shows. Maybe I want me to put it that way, so it's not that all are losing money, but I think that the weekend shows are the ones that maybe AQHA shows that used to have them on the weekends. Those are the ones that are in trouble. So, brian, do you want to add to that?
Brian:No, you're correct and Jody's correct, but you also got it. Horse shows making money? Yes, are they buying and selling on asset and net worth? No, because they're all nonprofit Organizations of some form that are focused on running net black Budgets and they do it again and again. So they make money, put it in the bank, they're in good shape and then their their risk is lower when horse shows go through the normal cycles that they go through. All of that stuff is real in this Western, the cowboy side. It's about purse money and so management that is focused on what they're doing Can do what Jody was talking about and what you see in our world is the normal ups and downs, because it's dependent on the people that are in the positions of leadership in those state Organizations, which are all nonprofit organizations, unlike some of the hunter-jumper circuits that are privatized, and they got long-term leases on Venues and all that kind of stuff, and I'm not being judgmental on them.
Brian:It's a different business model and that's about a mine ours. The liability is in prize money, purse money, added money to the purses, and that's what you got to do and you got to be smart with it. When you start, you know having Half million dollars million. The run for the million. He's gonna offer a million for three different disciplines. That's a pretty big nut to break from a business standpoint. You got to get creative and generate New revenue streams and part of that is he's put in front of an audience, so he's got ticket sales and sponsors, vip, all the other services that would come with an audience, which is new Revenue is where most of that prize money is originating from, is the audience that comes in to see the million in the entry fees, which means essentially repurposed and reinvested into the business, into the prize money.
Brian:Yes, that's what our industry does. Yes, it reinvests. Yes, which is the perpetuity. So Jody's organization been around for oh, 40 some years and it's probably had a dozen different groups of management and leaderships and all that's what comes and goes, something that we spent a lot of time talking about and thinking about with Pegasus is.
Sam:That's the financial side of the horse show. The other side of the horse show which in the English world is a lack of a better term facing an existential crisis, is the workforce. So because Equestrian sports have an up until Yellowstone, really they haven't had an influx of youth into the sport. Or Maybe it's just a cultural change in which younger people today don't really want to volunteer anymore. But horse shows on the East Coast, especially who in the English world who relied very heavily on Volunteers? Every year it's harder and harder to find volunteers because the volunteers are aging out.
Sam:The 70 year old woman Is like I just can't, it's too hard for me to get there anymore, I can't volunteer anymore, and the only way that they can backfill that person is to literally Scroung ask anyone. They know anyone will help out or they have to start paying volunteers and they haven't got the budget, they haven't got the margins in running the horse show to be able to consider paying volunteers. So that which leads to the question of how you're gonna solve this problem five years from now. Horse shows just gonna become Unviable unless there's a we figure out how to run horse shows. A lot were efficiently with a lot less people, because there's just not enough people to be volunteers on site and we can't afford to pay them. So do you have that same existential challenge in the Western horse sports?
Brian:Fundamentally yes. My answer to that is start doing horse shows different. Do you have an idea of what a horse are just what would look like? Yes, I break horse shows into three very simple categories To our horse shows and the third is events. We need to do horse shows that are focused on what a horse show needs to provide, which is entry-level, beginner stuff. That's the beginning. An Elementary, entry-level, beginner horse show should have all the looks and feels, rules and regulations. Officiating that goes to entry-level stuff. Then my second category is in the middle, which is people that already have experience, but our work, its practice, it's how do you do it, the thing with you learn from horses that's the beauty and you never stop, and so the more you do it, the better you get. You and your horse get well. That's the middle. You should have horse shows that are focused on that, which is the continuation of more activity, so that skills are being advanced, and then you go up to what I call events, which is the top, and that is a presentation of the best of the best to an audience, and all of those are different business structure models.
Brian:That's my answer to your point, which means the industry's got to look at itself and start doing things different. Instead of horse shows right now I can pick any horse show, I don't care what it is, and if I'm a beginner, a middle or an advanced, I'm going to the same thing. I just want different stuff. Well, stop and Stop making the beginner and the middle volume pay the bills for the top and needs. Stop. All Of that could be readjusted from a business standpoint if we looked at a different including rules, including Initiating, including standards. Should the rules be simpler at the entry level? Yes, and then should they move up? Yes. How do you develop officials? Same way, get them out there at the beginning, make it simple, make it easy, get them experience, build confidence. Can you work your way up?
Sam:What's the pushback from the governing bodies in the Western world on why they aren't Changing rules for different levels under the USEF portfolio? I understand it. The USEF has 28 disciplines They've got to manage. There's only so many hours in a day and no matter what rule you change, there's 20 people who are going to push back and threaten to sue you to change the rule. So they have got a whole but like that's a monumental task. But if I am the National Coding Wars Association and I only have one sport and there's only one rule book I've got to focus on, shouldn't it be relatively straightforward to be able to go through and create those separate?
Brian:levels. The answer yes, and the rest of your answer is it's called change and people have very hard difficulty with change period. So the answer is all of it and I disagree with your point. In the USEF, I don't care how large they are and I'm a life member. I say this if it means going to court to do it different than go to court, because that's what I pay you to do. So go solve the dilemma. Are there some rules that, if you're a member and you're active in the horse world, should be standardized? Yes, of course, but does that mean, with 27 different disciplines and you know all that stuff, that you can't Modify them and specify them for what your membership? And yes, you should be able to. And if it means go into court, go to court. That's that's what American society's gotten. When you ultimately have to solve the problem, that's what our court systems force. So go solve it in the Western world?
Sam:Do riders like the governing bodies in the USEF world? When you see the governing bodies as the tax man and they hate paying the fees and they just they find a reason to hate them. Is it the same in the West?
Jen:They're still American.
Jody:I think, from a trainer standpoint, I don't have issue with with my governing bodies of the Association. To rank out worse, I think that they, because they turn over so fast and most of them are either clients of someone like myself that Volunteers to be the president of NRHA they're not paid. So we don't have, as we don't have, much issue, I think, with governing bodies. But yes, certainly there are some things that could be done differently.
Jody:Brian's point about the show levels as a trainer back in my day, when I was taking 20 head to a horse show, I would have loved to just take in my non pros. I would have loved to just take in rookie level riders. I would have loved to just gone myself. So those different levels, just phenomenal ideas, and we've talked about that at length then. But to get people to change, in other words trainers, if they're going to go to the National Raining Horse Association, for surety they want to take two trailers full of non pros to it too, because they make more money doing that rather than leaving their Non pros at home and just taking the open horses. I think that they would actually make more money if they just took their open horses, from a prize money standpoint if they would give it the chance. But they won't do that because they say we want mileage, we want day fees, we want, we want as many as we can get there.
Sam:So let's just stop them from just running their own show and saying we're only doing this level. You know, in the USCF it's like if you want to be part of a licensed competition, you must follow the rules and that is the leverage that the governing body has over you. If you want to be part of the infrastructure, you want to get points, you want to be in consideration the Olympic team Because there is an entire infrastructure there. If you are trying to create a local show and you're not, you're not promising the riders that hey, come compete here and you're gonna get points. That's gonna help you qualify for the national championships. What is to stop them from just instituting that as their own horse show and just attracting Customers who want to participate in a horse show? That does only cater to less experience people the answer is in liability and insurance.
Brian:I've asked that question a zillion times in the last 20 years. Because could anybody step out and put on any horse event they want? Yes, they can. Why do they go get sanctioned? And and it could be done in any form why do they seek Sanctioning and governance and then you get into date sanctioning, which comes from national bodies, and they've been trying to protect Dates as opposed to letting horse shows get better. I've been a large proponent of that my entire career. The answer is in those two simple categories one is insurance and two is the liability of enforcement of rules. And the Jodi's point which Do we respect and want governing bodies for those reasons? That's what the resource world has been talking about on a federal level. Yes, everybody wants, they want rules, they want them to be fair and they need some enforcement. That's what governing bodies really should be doing enforcement, application of rules, licenses and records. And Then they get into all the rest of the business and that's where it gets messy.
Sam:But so just so I understand this when you say Insurance, by getting the license they basically get a very good insurance policy that's extended to them from the governing body and that basically makes the horse a viable. So if someone was to create a solution that afforded them the ability to get a really affordable insurance for the event outside of the governing body, that could theoretically go halfway towards solving the problem. The other half of the problem is that the liability is. Customers who pay to participate get pissed off if they feel like the rules aren't being followed to the T.
Brian:They're not fair, correct was to officiating and rule enforcement and that, ultimately, if you've got sanctioning, not my problem, take it up with the mother body that that is what we're doing. And then they go through the dance and it's years of all the stuff. You know, blah, blah, blah. Whether an official made a bad call or not, and whether somebody broke a rule or not. Again, that's not a show producers and and so there's a large piece there. It's part of the way people function, but when you put vast amounts of money in there, we function that way more a lot of the governing bodies also want to use their officials as the police force.
Jody:In other words, someone wants to have an open show. They'll say, no, you can't have it unless you follow our rules, because we won't give you a judge. In other words, we won't give you one of ours, we won't let you use it, so they'll. They'll hold the officials kind of as the up.
Sam:Another issue yeah, it's interesting because it kind of heard you guys podcast about the intercollegial programs, right, and the impact of title nines having on more colleges offering Equestrian programs to get more females in the collegiate sports, which is a really, really exciting prospect for the idea of building more infrastructure to get more youth into the sport or To protect more youth from abandoning the sport once they go to college, right. So that's great. But it sounds like that this idea of creating across the Western world, creating those different level shows, would be a crucial part of Helping get more people into the sport. Because now it's like when you go to the gym, if you walk into a gym full of really experienced people in the gym and they're all ripped and you're overweight and you feel Not, you don't feel confident, I'm not going to the gym. That's just like I can't take that leap right.
Sam:And I imagine this horse show was kind of the same as like if you have to go to competition and you're competing alongside Professionals, you're like, ah, this is just too much for me. But if you can step into the waters at a show that you know is your peers, your level, there's no stress, there's no anxiety, it's affordable, the rules are simple. That basically lays the foundational Infrastructure that gets more people into the sport and then that will obviously permeate up through the entire sport and be healthier for everyone Overall you're a hundred percent correct.
Brian:And why our horse shows clicky? Because of the reason that you just alluded to. So how do you solve that? That's the difference. And yes, it's of of like. Of like the bad news to human. The more the human knows, the more they want to be of like, because we get intimidated in trying new stuff. But that's the beauty of a youth, they don't care about that stuff. So if we looked at our industry and approached it that way you're a hundred percent correct, and I think a lot of that stuff would then you'd see, should every town on every sat, friday and Saturday have a Open horse show of some sort? Yeah, you should. And where's the fun and affordability there? And then everything steps up in. And, yes, it costs more when you want more and you practice more. Jody and I want to go play a tough golf course. We're gonna pay more to do it and we're gonna challenge ourselves. And can we go get a free one for 15 bucks? Yeah, we can.
Jen:That's the difference from other industries in the equestrian world.
Jen:So definitely with one having new blood be able to come into the sport and it be a lower barrier, if you will, but also for people that are already in the riding world and are curious about different Disciplines to be able to go and see these events that are more accessible.
Jen:The event that I've gone to in the Western world Granted, there haven't been a ton, because I grew up on the East Coast and it was in a very heavy English dominated area, but now the Yellowstone's come out, now that I've tried a raining lesson, it would be really cool to then go to a smaller show and give it a crack, actually be able to Get my feet wet, try it out. So being able to not just be accessible for the outside public but also for others that are Curious about other disciplines, and inviting them in and having it be so that we're not just in our silos but we're actually dabbling in a bunch of different sports, because at the end of the day, the horse is the commonality and so if you've got a quarter horse, chances are it's probably pretty good in both worlds, even the thoroughbreds, right. So having that barrier be lowered, a lot more accessible. I think it's gonna Not just help with the outside public but within people that are already in the industry.
Sam:And where can people find more information? What links, what channels would you like to subscribe to, etc.
Jody:I'll leave the finish up to Brian, but I so enjoyed this and it's it's been a great new experience for me to meet all of you and to To talk about it, and you know some of the solutions that we found Talking about this together. I think all we need the horse business in general, is for somebody to step forward and Do what we've been talking about, you know. I mean we just need somebody to bring this whole, this whole Business together and hopefully someday we can find someone that can do that, not just a Separate governing bodies we need. We need somebody looking over the whole thing, brian.
Brian:Where can they find us? It's simple. It's called cowboy office calm. Go to cowboy office calm, it's free. Our website gives all the details. Jody and I are very active in this last chapter of our career and life journeys, so we provide multiple services, but cowboy office calm, it's very simple. If you want to follow our podcast, we'd love to have you follow. Drop your email in and we send out routine to that list and we're going to be developing more Services as we go forward, which is about education information to the industry. I applaud you guys 100%. I think the biggest thing and Jody's 100% correct all of us in the horse world should be doing everything that we can to expose horses to people, because horses are good for people and people are good for horses, and so let's just all enjoy the ride. Thanks for having us.
Noah:Thank you so much for listening to the latest episode of the pegasus podcast. As you heard from our mid-roll, we are also releasing an equestrian event management software platform. Now it's easier than ever to host, sign up and sponsor for any equestrian event in the world, thanks to all the features of the pegasus app. To sign up, go to our homepage at thepegasusapp that is wwwpegasusapp. Thank you again and see you next time.