Rodeo Ticket Wars

Houston Rodeo's ticket wars raise questions: Is scholarship money thrown away in outdated fight?

In spite of the growing popularity of ticket reselling sites like StubHub, the Houston Rodeo will continue its fight against the secondary ticket market.

RodeoHouston/Facebook

With concert sales in full swing, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is busy rustlin' up its biggest foe . . . ticket scalpers.

While reselling tickets remains perfectly legal, rodeo officials say the so-called "secondary market" wrecks havoc on the event's mission of offering affordable prices. As such, HLSR employees spend countless hours smoking out casual scalpers and professional ticket brokers alike, doing everything from tracing IP addresses to staging covert buy-back schemes.

Rodeo chief operating officer Leroy Shafer tells CultureMap his team bans roughly 40 ticket brokers each year. He says season passes, with their prime seating locations, are the main targets for ticket brokers.

"Brokers will do their darndest to get good seats, especially to the hot shows," he says. "And, as we have in the past, we'll keep from selling to them."

"If 'behind the times' means we're not greedy, then I suppose we're behind the times."

But with the rise of mammoth online ticket marketplaces like StubHub — which officially partners with the Houston Astros and the University of Texas — the once-underground world of ticket reselling has gone mainstream, rivaling and even outpacing the traditional box office as a first stop for fans. Like most major sports teams, the Houston Rockets have their own secondary ticket marketplace with Flash Seats.

Several Houston ticket brokers, who request anonymity, tell CultureMap that the rodeo is "behind the times" for not embracing the lucrative and ever-growing secondary market. They note that the rodeo's recent issues with Ticketmaster online sales only pushed customer to online sites already filled with tickets offered by individual fans and brokers.

Worse, one broker notes that the Rodeo is only hurting its own mission by refusing to embrace the lucrative secondary market, essentially tossing away money that could fund more scholarships.

Shafer, however, remains committed to keeping rodeo ticket prices "low" through corporate partnerships and a large staff of volunteers. He vows to continue fighting scalpers, who already are charging hundreds and even thousands of dollars for rodeo concert tickets on StubHub and other similar sites.

"If 'behind the times' means we're not greedy, then I suppose we're behind the times," Shafer says.

"But guess what? We sold 1.3 million rodeo concert tickets last year to become one of the biggest music series in North America . . . We're going to keep doing the same thing we have for years."

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Movie Review

Stop motion animation takes flight in new Wallace and Gromit movie

Photo courtesy of Netflix

Gromit, Norbot, and Wallace in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

Of all the characters that Aardman Animations has produced over the years using their stop motion clay animation technique, Wallace & Gromit have proven to be their most enduring. First seen in a 1989 short film, they have gone on to star in three more shorts, two TV series, and two feature films, including the new Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

Wallace (voiced by Ben Whitehead) has always been known for his zany inventions, but he’s arguably at his zaniest in this film, which opens with a Rube Goldberg-like sequence featuring multiple machines that do all the work to get Wallace out of bed and down to the breakfast table. All of the contraptions are clearly unnecessary, but Wallace is oblivious to that fact, as well as to how they often negatively impact his dog/partner, Gromit.

His latest big thing is Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), a smart robot he designed to help Gromit with the drudgery of tending to his garden (even though Gromit likes doing the work). Feathers McGraw, a penguin imprisoned after Wallace & Gromit caught him trying to steal a large diamond, uses his technical skills to start a revenge plot, taking over Norbot’s programming and unleashing it to do his bidding.

Directed by Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham and written by Mark Burton, the film is yet another reminder of the brilliance Aardman is able to conjure through their dedication to an arduous animation technique and clever storytelling.

It can not be overstated how much effort goes into making even the smallest character movements, something that takes uncountable hours to craft a 79-minute film like this (watch this video for just a taste of that work). And then consider that it’s not just characters, but things like shuffling papers, steam coming out of a boat engine, and water(!). The skill they have for this very specific artistry is on full display throughout, making each frame a joy to see.

But all of that labor would be for naught if they didn’t pair it with a great story. Feathers, making his long-awaited return after appearing in a short film 31 years ago, is a fantastic bad guy, with the lack of expression on his face somehow making him seem even more villainous. The film also has a sly commentary on how modern technology offers conveniences that are often more trouble than they’re worth, a fun addition to Wallace’s litany of superfluous inventions.

It’s the small details that really put the film over the top, though. In addition to the animation, the filmmakers insert numerous blink-and-you’ll-miss-it touches that aid the humor. They include an allusion to Cape Fear when Feathers is put in jail, a hilarious list of options when Feathers switches Norbot from good to evil (including “Pleasant,” “Boorish,” and “Bit Selfish”), and many more. All of them show the thought put into every second of the film, making viewers have to pay constant attention to catch all the little jokes.

Aardman’s recent film efforts like Early Man and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget have not been their finest work, but going back to the well of Wallace & Gromit proves to be the boost they needed. The familiarity of the characters, the incorporation of the modern world into one that’s a little more old-fashioned, and the staggering animation is a combination that proves difficult to resist.

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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl debuts on Netflix on January 3.

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