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news to the Oklahoma City delegation and the PRCA hit the ground running to organize the first National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas with help from Las Vegas Events. According to Michael Gaughan, longtime board mem ber of Las Vegas Events, member of the NFR committee and Vegas casino mogul, a lot of people have tried to take credit for moving the event to the Nevada desert over the years. But in his eyes the vision started with Las Vegas icon Benny Binion. “Benny for years had talked about bringing (the NFR) here, and especially in December,” Gaughan said. “De cember was a very, very dead month in Las Vegas. The showrooms would close, they’d furlough the employees, you’d re-lay the carpet and repaint the walls. “Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it was just a

a bid not only to improve the NFR but also prolong the tourist season for a town that shut down during the holi day months. “The local casinos all got behind it, and a few of the big strip casinos got behind it,” Gaughan said. “When they found out the town stayed busy the first couple of weeks of December, it changed things around. Any other time of the year, the rodeo would not be as valuable, but it is in December. At the time, the PRCA was suffering a little bit, and it was kind of a two-way street for everybody.” After the vote, the real challenge began – getting the state of the art Thomas & Mack Center, host committee and PRCA ready to move the NFR to a new location for the first time in two decades. “There was a period when we got kind of stagnant for

dead time. And Benny always thought that bringing the rodeo here in Decem ber would change that around. And he was right.” Davis, a three-time PRCA World Champion Saddle Bronc World Cham pion (1965, 1967-68), said there was always discussion of improving the NFR and growing PRORODEO during his time as a contestant. But the idea started to intensify during the end of Oklahoma City’s ten ure because the production of the rodeo had deteriorated and the venue at the OKC Fairgrounds wasn’t up to snuff to host the season’s culminating event. “When I first became president, Lynn Beutler came up to me and said, ‘If you

about 30 days, to the point Oklahoma City was hoping to get it reconsidered,” Davis said. “But in the meantime, we were planning everything. This had only been done a couple of times before, but the interest level in the move and changes weren’t the same.” Davis said Ken Stemler, a 2014 ProRodeo Hall of Fame inductee, was heavily involved in the logistics and creativity necessary for the move. After months of discussion and planning, the NFR made the move and opened the 1985 edition of the world’s richest rodeo on Dec. 7, 1985, at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. As the president, Davis led the grand entry with legendary cowgirl Fern Sawyer.

don’t do something about the production of this rodeo, it’s not going to exist,’” Davis recalled. “I was aware of that, but there was always a conversation of where to go and how to do it. “As contestants, we were always trying to figure that out but it just happened to fall into line like it was meant to be (to move to Vegas).” Davis served as PRCA President from 1982-85 and later served as the general manager of the NFR from 1986 until his retirement in 2019. The first person he remembered formally broaching the subject of leaving OKC for Las Vegas was longtime Cae sars president Harry Wald. Davis was told by his secretary during an afternoon at the horse track that Wald wanted to talk about the NFR. Wald asked if the PRCA would be interested in making a move, but Davis was far from certain. “We were sold out in Oklahoma City and Oklahoma City had done a wonderful job of supporting and promot ing the rodeo,” Davis said. “So the thing that I’d be more interested in was to make sure that there was a lot more prize money or we wouldn’t be interested.” Davis followed up with Binion and relied on his con nections to serve as a go-between for Las Vegas and the PRCA. Las Vegas pooled all of its resources together and made

For the first two years, the NFR didn’t sell out, but in its fourth year in Las Vegas the event was packed. It’s been sold out for every performance since. “The first couple of years it didn’t sell out, and we were talking about a three-year extension,” said Gaughan, who joined the NFRC and LVE board in 1987. “Benny (Binion) said he’d underwrite the extension for three years, and we kept the rodeo.” From Dec. 4-13, Las Vegas will host the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo for the 40th time, a streak that was only broken in 2020 when the event commenced at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, during the COVID-19 Pandemic. In 2024, the PRCA and Las Vegas Events signed a contract extension to keep the NFR in Las Vegas through 2035 and payout of $264,323,472 to contestants and stock contractors over the life of the contract. “When you’re making those decisions, you don’t know what the future is,” Davis said. “But there were a lot of things that were set up correctly, and we both needed each other. Las Vegas may have need us more than we needed them at the time, but we couldn’t have had it happen any better or had it be more successful.” If the last 40 years of the NFR in Las Vegas have proved anything, the PRCA made the right decision at the Antlers Hotel.

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DECEMBER 3, 2025