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Country and western culture are having a moment.
Artists like Beyoncé and Post Malone and shows like Yellowstone are bringing the lifestyle from the niche to the mainstream—and Western sports is trying to ride that wave into the national spotlight.
“[Rodeo is] an age old sport, but the popularity around it right now has never been as hot as it is with more casual fans,” Deirdre Lester, CEO of the Western sports media company Teton Ridge, said Tuesday at Front Office Sports’ Tuned In event in New York.
Teton Ridge is trying to expand media coverage to meet the demand of what Lester describes as a “rabid fanbase.” Since 2021, the company has operated the American Rodeo—which drew more than 40,000 fans to Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, in March—and inked a three-year deal with Fox in late 2023 to air the event. The weekend’s events drew a combined 5.7 million viewers across Fox platforms while distributing a record $4.6 million to athletes.
The company has also taken a creative approach to fill a gap in Western sports coverage. Teton Ridge established its own “College GameDay” style show called “Rodeo Roadtrip,” where it traveled to several major rodeos filming segments around the event.
The media company livestreams its property Better Barrel Races, posts on social media for close to 150,000 followers combined on TikTok and Instagram, and has its eyes set on buying more sports rights.
The across-the-board media strategy is intentional. “I believe we have to be in all of those places,” Lester said. “That’s challenging, but I think it’s the big opportunity.”
Even cable? Yes, even cable. “In rural America, where the endemic, core rodeo fan is, they are still tethered to that cable TV more so than in other places,” Lester said. She also spoke about the need to reach international fans, as countries like Brazil, Canada, and Australia draw some of the biggest live audiences in the world for their rodeos.
Lester formerly spent four years as Barstool’s chief revenue officer, where she said the company “grew a massive audience and a massive business without ever having any live sports rights.” Compare that to her new position at Teton Ridge, where she says the company has hundreds of events annually which they they could use to produce content, from partners like PRCA, PBR, College Rodeo, and National High School Rodeo, plus their own events.
“We are in the business of…building the network of the future for Western sports. But that network is not going to live on one linear place or one streaming platform. It’s truly going to be distributed anywhere where fans are consuming content today,” Lester said.
If the rodeos or the bullish media strategy aren’t enough to rope people into Western sports, Lester thinks the business opportunity might be. When it comes to commercial partnerships, Lester sees Western sports as “really untapped from a brand perspective.”
“It hasn’t been oversaturated by brands like so many other sports have, where it’s hard to break in and make an impact,” she said. “I think our fans will really get behind brands that get behind this way of life because they love it so much. So that’s a lot of why I think that people should be paying attention.”
