Looking Forward to 2022

Dear Athletes,

As we close in on the end of 2021, I’d like to take a moment and give you a glimpse into what we have to look forward to regarding Triple Crown of Rodeo and Women’s Rodeo World Championship events in 2022.

We would like to congratulate all of the 2021 event champions. We have seen the individual earnings list grow tremendously. The total amount paid out to date is $10,876,197.

I’d like to start off by addressing the 2022 calendar and where we plan to host our Triple Crown of Rodeo events in 2022.

2022 Event Dates and Locations:

The world watched on Christmas Day as we wrapped up 2021 with the CBS broadcast of the final round of the Cowtown Christmas Championship Rodeo in Fort Worth, TX to see which athletes would secure their first or second win towards the $1 Million Triple Crown of Rodeo bonus.  This year, over 1.65 million individuals tuned in to watch the Triple Crown of Rodeo on a CBS network broadcast with a near 2.4 million tuning into the 2021 Women’s Rodeo World Championship. To date, rodeo broadcasts had never seen this many viewers in a single airing as the WRWC saw.  With over 4 million households tuning in to watch a WCRA rodeo this year, this is the type of viewership rodeo needs to grow. Congratulations to all the Cowtown Christmas winners. It is encouraging to see all the new faces and how well they all performed. The world will be watching Tacy Kay Webb to see if she can bag the TCR bonus at Rodeo Corpus Christi.

The first Triple Crown of Rodeo event to take place in 2022 will be Rodeo Corpus Christi in Corpus Christi, TX May 9^th-14^th

• Guaranteed payout of $550,000
• Top 48 in the Timed Events and 24 in the Riding Events VRQ Leaderboard will qualify to compete as of April 10, 2022
• The TCR round payout has increased to pay $15,000 to first place
• Steer roping will have a guaranteed payout of $55,000 including the B Roper Incentive and will be limited to the top 64 from the VRQ leaderboard
• DY (Youth) Timed Events
  • $21,000 guaranteed incentive payout in addition to the RCC payout
  • Top 8 from leaderboard to qualify as of April 10, 2022
  • DY athletes will compete in the open competition and will be eligible to win and advance.
    • Last year 20 DY athletes advanced to the Progressive Round
• The event fact sheet can be found here.

Following the completion of Corpus Christi, we will be officially announcing the $100,000 WCRA Division Youth Championship Rodeo.  Below are a few notes on the future DY event:

• The DY segment will be a yearlong leaderboard (very similar to the successful approach we have taken with Women’s Rodeo) and will open May 28, 2022 and close May 29, 2023
  • The WCRA Division Youth Championship Rodeo will be held in Fort Worth, Texas on  June 29 – July 1, 2023
• We are also working on plans to “divisionalize” the youth level with PRO and Challenger Leaderboards:
  • Pro leaderboard ages 19 and under.
    • Disciplines included are: BB, SW, TR (HD, HL), SB, TD, BAW, GBR, BR
      • Riding event minimum age will be 16.
  • Challenger leaderboard ages 13-15.
    • Disciplines included are: TR (HD, HL), TD, BAW, GBR

Immediately following Rodeo Corpus Christi the 2022 Women’s Rodeo World Championship will be held May 16– 18 in Fort Worth, TX.

• We are excited to announce that the 2022 WRWC event will now be a Triple Crown of Rodeo eligible event!
• Guaranteed $750,000 payout
• Top 20 on each Pro and Challenger leaderboards qualify plus those who earned a generic qualification at a Qualifier Series event. Learn more about Qualifier Series event details and schedule HERE
• In 2022, we will crown World Champions in both the Pro Leaderboard and the Challenger Leaderboard. In addition, the All Around will be awarded based on total points earned from 10/4/21 to 4/17/22. These championships will be awarded once the Semi Finals and Aggregate are completed (May 17^th) and before the Showdown and TCR round (May 18^th).
  • This change will not affect the Showdown and Triple Crown round, but it will allow those in each Pro and Challenger leaderboard the opportunity to earn a Championship buckle and title based on how they did throughout the entire season, including the bonus points available at the WRWC.
• All info can be found at wrwc.rodeo or click HERE

As we roll into the Summer, we head west for the Days of 47 Cowboy Games and Rodeo July 20-25 in Salt Lake City. This was a fantastic event last year and we don’t expect much to change this coming year. More details will be released in the coming months.

To cap off 2022 Triple Crown of Rodeos, we will return to the historic Fort Worth Stockyards December 14 -17, 2022 for the Cowtown Christmas Championship Rodeo.  

Virtual Rodeo Qualifier Updates:

Prior to opening a new segment, we reviewed and updated some of the Virtual Rodeo Qualifier (VRQ) protocols, and the following improvements were made:

The scales that we use to rank the events in our database in which you nominate are very important. They determine the integrity of the VRQ leaderboards and the amount of money you spend and the points you earn on these nominations. We have made some adjustments which took effect November 29, 2021.

• Open Jackpot Divisional Rankings

The Open Jackpot Divisional Ranking scale will be changing to the following: (Note: The Open Rodeo Divisional Ranking scale was NOT changed)

D1 – $40,000+

D2 – $20,000 – $39,999

D3 – $10,000 – $19,999

D4 – $3,500 – $9,999

D5 – $1 – $3,499

More detail about points can be found HERE

• Team Roping Event Classifications and Nomination Requirements

We’ve also noticed that the Team Roping jackpots were in some cases, ranked too high due to being grouped with multiple classes of ropings, moving forward Team Roping jackpots will now be listed in the VRQ separately by division. This allows each roping to ranked by its total payout rather than including other roping’s, which may be affecting the ranking and making it too high.

Example: A World Series roping pays out over $200,000 on a weekend but the open may only payout $9,000. So, rather than averaging all the divisions, each individual roping will be listed and ranked individually.

So, moving forward it is important that all team ropers select the exact roping and division you wish to nominate. This will ensure that you don’t pay more than you should to nominate your jackpot, and you will receive points for the roping that you intended to nominate.

IPRA Earnings

Lastly, I want to make sure you are all aware that if you are a current IPRA member, your WCRA/WRWC earnings up to $10,000 count toward your IPRA world standings. For full details on how your earnings count toward IPRA or to renew/purchase a membership, you can contact the IPRA office by calling 405-235-6577 or following this link: https://www.ipra-rodeo.com/membership

We created the WCRA to create new opportunities for rodeo athletes, not to compete with existing rodeo associations. It is our hope that more organizations will count your WCRA earnings. If you would like an organization to count your earnings, we encourage you to tell their leadership, reps and directors. It means a lot if they hear it from their members.

That being said, I want to wish you all a blessed holiday season and I thank you all for your participation this past year. If you ever have questions or feedback for our team on how we can continue to improve, please contact us either by emailing [email protected] or calling 833-213-WCRA.

-Bobby Mote, WCRA President