FORT WORTH, Texas \u2014 A rodeo and a golf tournament have little in common, except they are both now attended by people who visit the respective events then don\u2019t actually watch.<\/p>\n
One of the more confounding evolutions in sports is the practiced trend of people spending hundreds of dollars on tickets for seats that they use for entry, but often never actually sit in. Name the sport and you\u2019ll see it.<\/p>\n
Fort Worth\u2019s annual stock show and rodeo is in its final days of its 2026 run; the rodeo\u2019s move from Will Rogers Coliseum to the plush Dickies Arena is an unequivocal success, with one frustrating development: Seats that are paid for, but to the eyeball go unused.<\/p>\n
According to event officials, the tickets sold to the rodeo events this year were 95% for a seating capacity of 9,300. For the unaware, that sale rate is an astonishing figure.<\/p>\n
For those who go to the rodeo, or happen to watch it on TV, you will notice that math doesn\u2019t math. It does, and it doesn\u2019t. The people who bought those seats are present at the arena; they\u2019re all crammed in the clubs that look more like a rave with people decked in cowboy attire.<\/p>\n
Fort Worth\u2019s rodeo has Colonial\u2019s \u2018party problem\u2019<\/p>\n
When the rodeo moved from the old-school Will Rogers Coliseum to Dickies Arena, it was going to take full advantage of suites, and the new-venue trend of selling the club experience at a premium price. Will Rogers was long on \u201ccharm,\u201d and did not offer a single suite, or club.<\/p>\n
Dickies Arena, which opened in October 2019, features two main club areas, located on the plaza level at the respective ends of the venue. Often during the rodeo, it looks like there are 9,000 people in the clubs as patrons compete for air while waiting in line to order an $18 drink.<\/p>\n
Those people in the clubs have a ticket for a seat that they likely are not using. Face value for one of these tickets goes for $110 per show. A select number of tickets come with club access.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now Western lifestyle is really on a roll, and part of that experience at the rodeo is enjoying the camaraderie in a club,\u201d FW Stock Show & Rodeo spokesperson Matt Brockman said. \u201cThe rodeo is a very specific event, and the person who bought that ticket may go to their seat to watch the bull riding, or the barrel race, and then go to the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an event that Fort Worth circles around and people really do embrace, and part of that is using the event to spend time in that club.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brockman is no different from anyone else in these jobs; they see what you see, and …<\/p>\n
From a socializing aspect, the club experience is a success. It\u2019s a party at a game, there is demand, and the revenue is so easy.<\/p>\n
From an optics standpoint, it can make a nearly sold-out event look half empty.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the same issue event organizers at the Charles Schwab Challenge confront every year at Colonial Country Club, or 90% of the tournaments on the PGA Tour. People pay as much as $250 for a premium ticket where they can eat and drink under a tent, only to barely watch any of the actual golf that\u2019s 10 feet in front of their face.<\/p>\n
TCU home football games face the same challenge. Any venue that has a club deals with this problem. The difference is at a more quaint arena, like a Dickies, the lack of butts-in-seats has a high school baseball game feel.<\/p>\n
Texas addresses the \u2018club\u2019 issue<\/p>\n
One potential solution to this that is often discussed but never enforced is to sell a club-only ticket.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have fire marshal concerns, and that is something we have to take into consideration,\u201d Brockman said. \u201cWe have to be sensitive to that restriction. The ticket buyer who buys that seat wants access to the club.\u201d<\/p>\n
To sell a club-only ticket as well offer access to the same area through the conventional ticket is to potentially double the capacity in spaces that don\u2019t have the square footage. So that\u2019s a no.<\/p>\n
The only real solution to lure patrons from club and return to their seats is something that the University of Texas effectively addressed this week. Long before there was a cool club, the tailgate kept people from going into college football games.<\/p>\n
The game has to draw people into the seat.<\/p>\n
In a town hall meeting in Austin, UT director of athletics Chris Del Conte addressed the future home football schedules at Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium, which was a point of contention after the Longhorns were not selected to be in the 2025 college football playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will tell you that college football is built around your regular season,\u201d Del Conte said during the meet-and-greet with fans. \u201cDo you guys really want nice, good [home] games? We can play three cream puffs, and we can play an SEC schedule. But if the playoff is going to expand, which I prefer the playoff expands, you want to then have great games, right, and value those great games.\u201d<\/p>\n
The great game will do it.<\/p>\n
The club life is now a staple of the stadium experience. People love it, and will pay a lot of money for a seat that they may not ever use.<\/p>\n
\u00a92026 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit star-telegram.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a><\/p>\n \n Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.\n <\/p>\n \n Error! There was an error processing your request.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT WORTH, Texas \u2014 A rodeo and a golf tournament have little in common, except they are both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[261,300,116,118,117,6795,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-156158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-fort-worth","11":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","12":"tag-fort-worth-news","13":"tag-rodeo","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}