How Much Does An AQHA Show Cost?

When you receive your bill after entering your classes and paying for your stall at breed shows do you gulp in amazement or just get mad at the “folks who are making a fortune” on this show?   Do you ever wonder where your money goes?   This topic comes up on a regular basis on many of the horse related web sites and from the comments made I’ve determined that most people are in need of an explanation of the costs involved in providing them with a recognized breed show ( in this case an AQHA one since that is where my specialty lies ).   Perhaps seeing the numbers will be helpful in understanding why your show expenses are what they are.

Let’s start with the very first expense, gaining show approval from the AQHA.   In order to be an approved AQHA show the management must first submit a request to hold an AQHA show in writing for consideration by the show and contest committee.   The show dates selected must not conflict with any existing show per the current rules.   They also consider the availability of a suitable location to hold the show and in some cases the people selected to run the show.   If the show makes it past this point, it is time to fill out an application and pay our show approval fees.   For each instance of a show, the approval fee is $100.00.   Thus for the typical 3 day show the cost is $300.00.   This fee is non refundable.

Now the manager/secretary needs to lock down their facility since they have a date for their event.   The facility I use the most requires the signing of a contract usually at least 6 months in advance with a key deposit of $3009.00 up front and the contract stipulates a minimum fee in the event that we do not hold the show or the show is smaller than something else they had the chance to book for those dates.   For 2007 my minimum fee was $4,200.00.   The facility does enforce its contracts so I have to plan that my bill from them will be at least that $4,200 whether I actually earn that amount or not.   I also have manditory labor charges for working the arena, emptying trash, cleaning restrooms, etc. This usually ends up being at least $1500 for the weekend. Some facilities still charge for stalls by the days they are actually used but in the area where I am there is a flat fee for the show depending on the number of days and the stalls are billed at that amount whether they are used all the days or not.   That is one of the primary reasons you see circuit fees with no option to pay by the day or you see a very high one day fee. Also many facilities now mandate a stall for each horse on the show grounds, jump outs are not allowed, luckily for me mine grumbles but allows them.

With the facility in hand we now have to determine if we need to secure bedding or we must use the facilities resources.   If the facility dictates the supplier we need to find out how much they will charge us so we can put the amount on the showbill.   We also need to know whether people can bring their own to this event.   If we are allowed to provide our own shavings, a potential profit source, we need to find a supplier, get a commitment on the delivered price and hire staff to deliver the shavings.   At one of our last shows of 2007 our delivered cost was $4.05/bag, rental on the gators to deliver was $100/day and the staff to deliver was $100/day per person with at least 2 required for the move in day and the first day of the circuit when most people move in.

Next on the list is hiring the judges.   The minimum judging fee according to the AQHA rulebook is $250.00 per day.   The real judging fee charged by most judges is in the $500/650 per day range for an 8/9 hour day with over time of $50/$75 per hour after that. This fee is affected by the type of show you are having.   Many judges are now charging more per day for a single judged, single day show than they do for a split/combined show.   In addition the show must pay for transportation to/from the show, lodging, meals and reasonable expenses.   While a few shows such as the Congress and the world show can and do negotiate on the daily judging fees the reality is that we call the judge, ask if they are available and what they charge.   Want to hire the judge?   Then you pay the fees they request or you keep looking.   With most of the judges being in the horse business in some way I find that I usually require 60 to 100 contacts to hire my three judges for my April weekend.

We probably need to do some minimal advertising although the internet has reduced this amount.   Our state association requires that we put a showbill in the newsletter and this costs $75.   If we have a big enough facility to promote the show on a larger scale this would be considerably higher as the Journal is now around $1400/page for black and white and the Chronicle is around $800n per page.

Next we need to hire the show staff.   This includes the ring stewards, office help, announcer and any arena and barn staff that we need to run the show smoothly and keep the exhibitors reasonably happy.   In our area announcers receive $150 -$200 per day.   The listed secretary & manager usually receives $200/$500 per day and office staff get $75/$125 per day depending on the length of the day.   Arena and barn help also receive $75/$125 here as well.   Ring stewards are paid in the same range as our announcers and may also receive overtime if the day is very long.

Awards now need to be considered.   AQHA has a rule which requires that shows provide prizes for all amateur, youth, novice amateur and novice youth classes for at least 1 st through 6 th places.   Didn’t know that rule existed?   Neither do a lot of shows if the chat sites are to be believed.   My group does provide either a ribbon or a choice of a horsey related prize and our annual expense for these plus the grand and reserve champion halter ribbons was around $1000 for 2007 of which $350.00 was spent on ribbons with the rest being on prizes for the 50 required classes.   Then we have to consider the circuit awards.   My 2007 show had 78 classes for which an award was needed.   We require that you show all three days in the class to be considered so that omits about 8 classes (usually halter) that we can eliminate so 70 awards are needed.   Budgeting $20 per award gives us a cost of $1400.00 for the circuit awards.   We work very hard through out the year to find a prize that exhibitors will want and then we call on our contacts to “help us out on the price” so that we get decent awards within our budget.   It can be done but it takes lots of work.   Finally we have the thanks for coming drawings that a popular show manager instituted that we now have to provide to keep up with the Jones’.   This year those prizes cost us over $1000.00.

Now, lets talk about those darned drug fees.   AQHA charges each exhibitor $3/day for drug testing.   Some folks never seem to see the guys but I had 3 weekends that I saw them at shows in our area so AQHA is spending the money.   For my show I averaged 125 horses per day so that bill was $1125.00 to AQHA.

The last major costs to be considered are the show supplies and miscellaneous.   This category includes show bills, entry forms, pens, pencils, batteries for walkie talkies, computer supplies, etc.   Once again, working with contacts in the community we managed to hold this amount down to $250 for the 3 day show.

Here is a spread sheet for a typical show in my area with 210 stalls rented,35 grounds fees, 125 horse exhibited and 350 entries per day at an entry fee of $12 for open, amateur & youth and $9 for all novice classes.   We had a enter both your novice and regular class and pay only for the regular class special to try and gain some more entries in the regular classes.   Many shows now include a computer fee of anywhere from $10/$75 per circuit or a facilities charge but we did not use those at our shows this year. This facility mandated the use of their shavings and based on their price of $6.50/bag we chose not to increase the price as a benefit to our customers.

As you can see, we made around $400 on this show when all is said and done.   Now, if we could find volunteers and a few more sponsors we could increase our profit by a couple of thousand bucks.   In this area youth sports like soccer and baseball are king so sponsorships pretty much come from the horse folks who frankly are tapped out with all the various groups asking so we are happy with what we get and not disappointed when people say no, thanks.   As far as volunteers go, most of our shows are either put on by individuals who picked them up when horse groups quit having them or our state organization and members want to show, not volunteer so we must pay in most circumstances.   Facility rental rates and travel costs vary so much by geographic region this may not be an accurate representation for your part of the country but what you can see is what the expenses are to put on a show and you can then adapt them to your area.