The Fun Show…By The Numbers
Wednesday, May 25, 2011

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by Jeffrey Howard

As tradition holds, Memorial Day weekend will once again host the 40th Annual Spring Fun Show at the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration’s Calsonic Arena.  As with most of the industry’s shows, entries are at a premium and sponsorships are getting harder to come by.

A closer look at the entries confirms that entries have fallen but also speaks to many other interesting facts.  Since 2007, the entry numbers have been the following:
2007 – 572
2008 – 591
2009 – 314
2010 – 464

As you can see, the 2010 Fun Show had a nice rebound but is still 127 entries less than the 591 in 2008, a 21% decline.  To analyze the entries and class sheet further speaks to the difference in flat shod and padded entries.   The following is the breakdown of those entries between flat shod and padded:
Year   Flat Shod    Flat Shod %      Padded       Padded %
2007     157          27.45%           415        72.55%
2008     113          19.12%           478        80.88%
2009      83          26.43%           231        73.57%
2010     104          22.41%           360        77.59%

In total the class sheet in those years had 195 total classes, split 42 flat shod classes and 153 padded classes.  That is 21.5% flat shod classes and 78.5% padded classes.  If you look at the total entries it shows that a similar percentage of both flat shod and padded horses have supported the Fun Show. 

The total entries in those four years are 1941, split 457 flat shod entries and 1484 padded entries.  That is 23.5% flat shod entries and 76.5% padded entries.  To state that another way, the flat shod classes in the last four years have averaged just under 11 horses per class and padded classes have averaged just under 10 horses per class.

However since 2007, flat shod entries have decreased from 15.7 horses per class to 8.67 horses per class in 2010.  In the padded division, the entries have gone from 11 per class in 2007 to 9 per class last year.  In total over those four years, 9.95 horses have been entered per class at the mid-season Fun Show.

The 40th Annual Spring Fun Show is looking to capitalize on last year’s rebound and return the entry numbers to the levels of 2008.  As is tradition, many of the top horses use the Spring Fun Show to launch their campaign toward World Championship acclaim and this year looks to be in line with that tradition.

 

 

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