Riata is a team roping stallion incentive program designed to promote Riata stallions and the proliferation of quality rope horses.
During its first three years Riata has become the third richest roping in the world with the most added money ever for roping at $1.78 Million,
which will allow us to easily pass the next threshold of $4 Million at our 2025 Championships.
The team roping horse, at any and all levels, from the #7 division to the Pros, are now emerging to be specifically and deliberately bred animals with the features, composition,
mindset, and dispositions that is most desirable for the vast majority of recreational team ropers. The program brings together stallion owners, mare owners, breeders and ropers.
Riata is built for roping horses of all ages and ropers of all skill levels.
Riata is leading this profound shift in the rope horse business by giving stallion owners and breeders a marketing advantage and increasing the value of the progeny of the horses
that participate in the program. This is done by focusing our attention on the massive earnings of team roping. Riata has introduced an aggressive side pot program to accumulate
earnings. Every Riata side-pot is about creating a trackable, reportable, transparent record of performance within the richer main roping. These results go into QData earnings.
The more we track, the more value we build for every Riata horse in the game.
Horse racing, barrel racing, cutting and reining have grown their influence and market value by simply documenting and promoting what their horses earn. In today's performance horse world,
a stallion's value isn't just built in the breeding shed—it's built in the earnings reports. If we want rope horses to stand shoulder to shoulder with those disciplines, we must show the money.
That is what is necessary to elevate team roping genetics, and that is what Riata is focused on accomplishing.
TEAM ROPING 2024 TOTALS- three years ago before Riata, QDATA listed about $5 million in earnings from rope horses, and in 2024 its at $16 million. You might think a three-fold increase is good,
if you ignore what is left on the table. Team roping paid out $119 million in 2024—but only $12 million of that made it into official horse earnings databases. The rest is invisible to the stallion market.
That's the gap Riata is focused on closing.
TEAM ROPING - $119 Million Equine Network verified $107 million in purses through its GEMS software and Global Handicaps, which includes Riata earnings.
QDATA 2024 EARNINGS REPORTED
- AQHA RACING - $150 MILLION
- BARREL RACING - $67 MILLION
- CUTTING - $60 MILLION
- REINING - $30 MILLION
- REINED COW HORSE - $14 MILLION
- TEAM ROPING - $12 MILLION
- PLEASURE HUNT SEAT - $7 MILLION
- HALTER - $3.4 MILLION
- RANCH - $3.4 MILLION
- TIE-DOWN ROPING - $2.7 MILLION
- BREAKAWAY ROPING - $2.3 MILLION
With the BIG exception of team roping, these numbers give a clear picture of where horse money is vesting itself.
The goal is obvious: $12 Million Now >>> $119M Potential
“The biggest potential for the future of the Quarter Horse industry rests in team roping.”
