The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo™ is an agricultural and educational charity dedicated to benefiting youth and education, providing affordable family entertainment, and preserving Western heritage.
To maximize its ticket selling potential and to best achieve its charitable and educational purposes, the Show markets its tickets through various channels:
Season Tickets:
The Show has sold season tickets (or Box Seats as they were called in the Sam Houston Coliseum before the Show moved to its current location) since 1938. No different than all of the major sports teams and most other entertainment entities, the Show sells season tickets (a ticket to each of the 20 rodeo/concert performances) to facilitate its spectators and to maximize revenue across performances. Full season ticket packages may be purchased months in advance. Season ticket purchasers have on-going renewal options on their seat locations. Season tickets are sold at the action seat level, the field level, the club level and throughout the two suite levels (all of the suites on the second and fourth levels are sold as season tickets). Prior to going on sale to the general public on Jan. 13, 2007, the Show had sold nearly 34,000 tickets per performance (full season tickets and mini-season ticket packages). Season tickets account for 47.2 percent of the capacity of Reliant Stadium during a rodeo/concert (RODEOHOUSTON™) performance. Anyone can buy season tickets. A limited number of season tickets (full and mini-packages) are still available to anyone wishing to buy them.
Group Tickets:
The Show utilizes a volunteer committee to sell group tickets to businesses, churches, civic groups and various associations. Group tickets are sold before entertainers are announced. There were nearly 10,000 group tickets sold this year. They averaged about 500 tickets per performance. More group tickets are sold for weekend performances than for weekday performances.
Pre-Sales:
The Show has approximately 19,000 members serving as committee volunteers and an additional 13,000 members who are not volunteers. These volunteers have a three-day window and the members have a two-day window to buy tickets before they go on sale to the general public. Reliant Energy, by virtue of being the Show’s naming rights partner, had the privilege of making an e-mail offer to its customers and staff the day before tickets went on sale to the public (5,010 total tickets were sold, with 1,279 of those for the George Strait concert and 1,335 for the Hannah Montana/Cheetah Girls concert). All totaled, the volunteer/membership/Reliant Energy pre-sales were 83,141 tickets this year (averaging about 4,157 tickets per performance). Some performances sold more and some sold less. These pre-sales accounted for 19,612 tickets for the performance featuring Hannah Montana and the Cheetah Girls, and 14,024 tickets for the performance featuring George Strait.
Chute Seats:
The Show manifests 192 “chute seats” for each of its performances. These tickets are the first three rows (64 seats per row) behind the “rough stock” chutes on the north end of the RODEOHOUSTON arena. These seats include various amenities such as a chuck wagon dinner and the ability to watch the concert from the arena floor in front of the rotating stage. These tickets have been on sale for several months (well before the Show’s concert entertainers were announced) at the Show offices.
The Show manifests 72,506 rodeo/concert tickets per performance, totaling 1,450,120 rodeo/concert tickets for the 20 performances in 2007. When complimentary tickets and non-sellable tickets in luxury suites, entertainment suites and the press box, are factored in, there are about 70,300 seats available for sale to each performance.
