Is this the end of the Chamber rodeo?

By NATALIA JONES

Register Staff Writer

For the first time in 22 years, the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce Rodeo will not be held at the Gainesville Riding Club’s arena.

In fact, Chamber of Commerce President John Broyles said the rodeo may not take place at all.

Due to discrepancies over the lease contract with the Gainesville Riding Club, members of the chamber board finally agreed not to enter into a new contract with the organization.

Originally the chamber has paid $3,000 to lease the arena for the annual event. However this year, that lease was raised to $5,000. The riding club also wanted to sponsor a calf scramble each night of the rodeo and to have a scoop race.

“The difference in the lease agreement that we had last year is that last year’s was simply a lease agreement,” said Broyles. “The only stipulation was that we would take down the signs we put up for advertisers at the end of the rodeo, so we presented a contract to the riding club with that stipulation in there.”

The problem the members of the board had with the newly proposed lease agreement, explained Broyles, was that they felt the riding club wanted to have control over the chamber’s event.

“The chamber only wants to lease the riding club arena so we can hold the chamber rodeo,” said Broyles. “We’re not interested in entering into a partnership with the riding club and that’s really what this all boils down to.”

Broyles added that the chamber also paid for insurance and maintenance of the arena in order to lease for the rodeo.

However, Gainesville Riding Club 1st Lieutenant Jimbo Love said the reason why the club wanted to sponsor the calf scramble and scoop race, was to help the chamber rodeo become “bigger and better,” not to control the event.

“We had been asked before to help them to improve their rodeo and attendance, so I told them most people who come to a rodeo don’t know many people on the arena floor,” said Love. “I’ve been going to rodeos all my life, and if there’s one thing I know it’s that if you get people down on the rodeo floor that local people can connect with, like with the calf scramble, then not only will the parents come to the rodeo but also the grandparents and people they know.”

For both organizations, the event was a huge fundraiser. Last year, Broyles said the chamber made $30,000 from the rodeo, $10,000 of which came from advertising signs placed around the arena.

A major issue, and perhaps the final straw for the chamber board, was new restrictions the riding club tried to enforce on the signs this year, said Broyles.

In a revised agreement, the riding club stated that any signs the riding club had up were not to be covered by advertisers for the chamber rodeo. This was to include signs above the entrance gate and announcer stand, which Broyles said was prime real estate and generated 1/3 of the chamber’s profit during last year’s rodeo.

“They removed all of that from us,” said Broyles. “It’s just not a very wise decision for us to enter into something like that and I can’t understand why they would want to deny us the ability to make money at our rodeo since it is our biggest fundraiser and by far their biggest source of income.”

While Love said the lease agreement generally did produce a half of what the riding club makes throughout the year, the riding club felt it was unfair to lose its own advertising sales due to the chamber rodeo.

“We made the restrictions for the simple fact that we’ve had other people approach us to buy those signs,” said Love. “But we never could get people to buy signs for us because they weren’t allowed to be up during the chamber rodeo and that cost us some revenue. The chamber started leaving some of the signs up year round so we couldn’t put up our own and that’s not really fair for us since the chamber rodeo is only one month throughout the year.”

Love admitted he was discouraged that the two groups could not “get on the same page” and is sad that there won’t be a rodeo this year, but he said the riding club’s future will not be affected by the falling out.

“Of course we didn’t want to lose the revenue from the chamber rodeo, but we’ll survive,” said Love. “It’s not going to be devastating for us. We have other events planned during the year and we’ve just been getting bigger and better throughout the year so we’ll just fill that month in with some other event.”

As for the future of the chamber rodeo, Broyles said he would still like to hold the event but fears there is not enough time to find a suitable location.

“I can’t see us having a rodeo this year and it’s very sad,” said Broyles. It’s a shame that after 22 years of community involvement from the businesses who have wanted to support the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce, to the citizens who have helped out with the event each year, that we’re getting denied this annual event that has become a fixture in the community.”