Wayne Gamble measured the success of this year’s Canadian Western Agribition in an unusual way.
“Since I’ve come here it’s been one of my goals to have scalpers outside the Agridome,” the show’s executive vice-president told reporters at a news conference last Sunday.
“Friday night, we had people scalping Agribition rodeo tickets.”
People were also scalping Saturday night rodeo dance tickets at nearly twice their value.
“This is as good as it gets,” Gamble smiled.
The 27th agricultural show held Nov. 23-30 in Regina, will be remembered for scalpers, a new format and layout, and unseasonable warm weather.
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“What a difference one year makes,” Gamble said. “If you think back a year ago … we’d come through a show where we had consistently dropped into the -30 range every night and consistently failed to get above – 20 in the day time. We had plowed 14 inches of snowfall from the week before.”
Final figures weren’t available but organizers expected this year’s above-zero temperatures to push attendance over 150,000. Last year’s attendance was more than 140,000.
Agribition president Audrey Horkoff said the board will now evaluate the new eight-day schedule and make minor adjustments.
Feedback from exhibitors was generally positive, with one Hereford exhibitor telling Horkoff he saved the cost of six people on show day because of the barn layout alone.
“Some of the exhibitors, when they came in, were saying, ‘Well, we’re going to go with it, we hope it works,’ sort of giving us the benefit of the doubt,” Gamble said. “Once they got here they saw the benefit of having all seven beef barns side by each so that there were no other species in between.”
Problems did occur for some exhibitors, mostly in the trade show, who had been at Mexabition in Saskatoon until the day before Agribition started. The Agribition trade show didn’t open the first day to allow these exhibitors to set up, but that caused confusion for the public, Gamble said.
Learn from mistakes
There were also a few problems in a building that housed trade show exhibits and horses together.
“We learned you can’t have a trade show in a horse barn when you have three changeovers in a week,” Gamble said. “Those poor guys, the barn was dusty all the time and doors open and people coming and going. They had ferocious traffic but to keep their displays looking good was a real challenge.”
Other things organizers will look at include having the bison show and sale closer to the elk sale because many bison breeders have or want to get into elk, and vice versa.
Gamble and Horkoff agreed Agribition has positioned itself as the show of choice for specialized livestock breeders. In addition to elk and bison, which have been at the show for several years, this year featured llama and alpaca sales.
“Diversification is a big part of what’s happening out on the farm and in agriculture, and all we’re doing is accommodating them,” Horkoff said.
Official sales figures were expected to total nearly $4 million, boosted by the llama and alpaca sales which brought in $387,000.
