Ag Society reports another record-breaking year

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Strathmore and District Agricultural Society winds down 2025 acknowledging another straight year of breaking event records and entertaining western audiences. 

“Our Cowboy Town Concert, pretty well all days of our rodeo and chuckwagons, our ticket sales were up. We have kind of been setting records every year for the last few years, so we continued to do that,” said Doug Raycroft, CEO of the Ag Society. “Some of the challenges we had were weather. We had a big storm the day of the cowboy town concert so luckily the singer did two performances. One, the day of inside in the arena, and then another one the next day outside.”

Similarly, Raycroft added the weather shortly prior to the Strathmore Stampede was also adverse. The rain caused difficulties in being able to prepare the rodeo grounds for the event. 

The Strathmore Stampede maintains a host of over 400 volunteers who come out to participate in making the event run as smoothly as possible.

“It’s really a community event … we are pretty lucky,” said Raycroft. “It’s important for us to be connected as much as we can with the community.”

Taking over as CEO of the Ag Society, Raycroft initially took a backseat to operations which had largely been planned out prior to the start of his tenure. 

Having now occupied the role for more than half a year, he explained he has settled into the chair and is working with the team to try and find efficiencies wherever possible while taking advantage of their available spaces. 

“We do have our infield suites that are new so that has really helped, and then ticket sales just keep going up. We want to try to use our space and all of the things that we do in an effective way,” he said.

Regarding the Western Event Center soon to see construction in Wheatland County, the ag society was able to successfully acquire a $5 million grant from the provincial government to support its development. 

A committee will be meeting in January to continue the discussion about how to proceed with the “daunting” task of constructing the facility.

“It’s not really a big update, just that we are moving forward on it. We want to get together with our committee – we will have to make some decisions, contracting things and setting up timelines and getting all the financial things in place before we can break ground,” said Raycroft. 

Through 2026, Raycroft said the idea is largely to stay the course and continue regular operations of their event roster.