Last June, Learfield announced the launch of an intercollegiate rodeo division, anchored by schools that don’t typically come to mind when thinking about how to capitalize on college sports: Wyoming, Cal Poly and Montana State.
Aside from a passing stab the company took at the boom-and-bust esport craze—in 2020, Learfield launched Level Next, a competition series for undergraduate gamers, which appeared to sputter out by the end of 2022—rodeo is its first real venture into the corridors of club sports.
Nevertheless, the news last summer got little notice at the time, which occurred as Learfield was trying to wrap up a “comprehensive deleveraging transaction” that would clear $600 million of debt. Its precarious financial position owed to a number of bad bets the company had made, further exacerbated by the pandemic, on the guaranteed yearly returns it could count on from its multimedia rights deals.
In recent years, Learfield has exited a number of those agreements while scouring for lower-risk opportunities in college athletics that could pay off big down the road. And so finds the multimedia rights giant’s latest go-round with cowboy culture.
“Rodeo is as popular as ever,” said Brad Poe, vice president and general manager of Learfield College Rodeo, noting the recent streaming successes of TV series Yellowstone and 1883. “There is a romance to this space (and a) lot of elements, culturally, that have increased the popularity of the sport. Our end is driven in a few ways: One is to grow upon and be supportive of our partner institutions, serving our sponsors and schools. We have those relationships, we have all that in place, we have resources at Learfield—a professional sales team—to elevate the sport and increase revenue while providing championship experience.”
To date, Learfield has signed rodeo-specific sales representation agreements with 10 of its existing school partners, in addition to one region, with the hopes of wrangling another eight to 10 schools by the end of year. ( Poe said the targeted goal is 40 teams “and then we’ll see what the landscape looks like.”
Most of the deals are structured as their own distinct contract or—as in the case of schools like Montana State—with an addendum to its existing Learfield multimedia rights agreement.
The financial terms, in this early going, are quite modest: Learfield, for example, is paying an annual fee next year of $35,000 to Montana State plus half of any sales in excess of $70,000 (less agency commissions and out-of-pocket expenses). A Learfield College Rodeo contract with Idaho State, obtained through a public records request, included identical financial terms; Learfield declined to say whether this was the case across the board.
Given the expense of the sport—the animals, entry fees, the horse trailers—any bit helps.
As a college sport, rodeo is not part of the NCAA but instead under the dominion of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, an organization that dates back to the end of World War II. NIRA oversees about 125 schools, most of which are classified as on-campus clubs and housed in their schools’ college of agriculture or campus recreation center.
The association also runs the College National Finals Rodeo (CNFR) each year in Casper, Wyo., the latest version of which is set to go from June 9 to 15. Last fiscal year, about a half of NIRA’s $1.96 million in annual revenue came through either sponsorships or CNFR proceeds.
Montana State is among the few programs that exist under the umbrella of an athletic department. In the fiscal year, the team brought in $965,092 of revenue, while spending a little bit more, $968,262.
Though there are NIRA-affiliated rodeo programs at major athletic powers, like Texas A&M, the elite teams tend to exist in the lower strata of college athletic departments. Treasure Valley Community College, a two-year institution based in Oregon, currently sits atop NIRA’s national men’s team standings, followed by Montana State.
For the individual programs, Learfield’s interest in the sport is widely welcomed. But its larger, national ambitions have caused angst at the sanctioning body.
“I am really glad that they are there to help the individual schools, and that is what we wanted them to do,” said NIRA commissioner Jim Dewey Brown. “These rodeo teams might be struggling to get exposure, just with administrations, so this takes them more into that mainstream within their school, and I really like that.”
As for NIRA’s interest in collaborating with Learfield on national sales, Brown expressed much less enthusiasm.
“That is not what the national office is about,” said Brown. “When we reach out to a national sponsor—a potential one, or even our old ones—they are like family to us. It is not just another business giving us money to advertise. We have long-standing relationships with our partners and we are beyond loyal to them, so we don’t want to lose those.”
Speaking from Learfield’s perspective, Poe told Sportico: “We would love, as we continue to grow in this space, to be able to align with them somehow.”
Learfield is also now in the planning stages of its own championship competition exclusively for its school partners, though Poe is quick to add that it is “100% meant to be complementary to the [College National] Finals Rodeo. This is not to overtake or compete against it.”
Then there’s television.
Back in the 1960s, the College National Finals Rodeo was broadcast before national TV audiences on ABC and NBC. More recently, the event has been covered live on ESPN3, via the ESPN app, with two edited programs of the finals running later in the summer on ESPNU. Brown said NIRA last month re-upped its ESPN deal for another three years.
Learfield, meanwhile, sees potential here as well.
“We do see a path where we would like to [create a] broadcast entity to deliver that to school partners,” said Poe. “When we talk about elevating [rodeo], it is about bringing more exposure, bringing brands and broadcasting them, streaming them and working with [existing] media.”