The California Rodeo’s First Live Stream Ever! — California Rodeo 2018 Recap

This year the annual California Rodeo Salinas celebrated it’s 108th year, and Mag One Media had the immense honor of becoming one of the rodeo’s Gold Champion Sponsors this year. If you didn’t know, the California Rodeo Salinas is one of the top 20 Professional Rodeos in the United States and the largest in California. As a not-for-profit organization the California Rodeo gives back up to $400,000 each year to local nonprofits. As proud sponsors of the event, we worked closely and diligently with the rodeo and many creatives to launch some quality & engaging content, including video, ticket giveaways, the first-ever live “TV-show” streamed directly from the California Rodeo!

The action-packed rodeo happened July 18th – 22nd, but the week-long celebration, known as Big Week, kicked off with a massive concert held at the Salinas Sports Complex on Friday, July 13th. This year’s headlining performer was world-famous country singer and vocal coach from NBC’s The Voice, Blake Shelton. We captured some great video footage of the concert, including a timelapse of the entire event from setup, to the actual show.

The celebration didn’t end there. The next day our team captured the annual Kiddie Kapers Parade, as well as the Colmo del Rodeo parade, where thousands of people, every year, line the streets of Old Town Salinas to watch children ride on floats, bikes, and wagons; as well as watch decorated cars and horses parading down Main Street. This was our second year providing a live stream of the parades with a total of 5 cameras–each with different points of view of the parade–to be streamed live on the California Rodeo Salinas Facebook Page!

Around the same time as the Blake Shelton concert and Kiddie Kapers & Colmo del Rodeo parades, Mag One Media also launched a huge ticket giveaway on Facebook and Instagram. We gave away 8 sets of 4 rodeo tickets (A total of 32 tickets for a value of approximately $800 in total) to those who followed @magonemedia, liked our posts, and tagged their friends. Over 400 people from Instagram and Facebook combined entered to win. We announced winners throughout Big Week, live on our IG and FB. By the end of the contest our following on Instagram had increased by about 40%, going from less than 690 followers to over 950 followers in 2 weeks!

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Our biggest highlight of the week, however, was being tasked with producing the first-ever live show at the California Rodeo to be live streamed to Facebook. “Where the West Goes Live”, the name of our production, lasted 5 days, from Wed (7/18) to Sun (7/22). To accomplish the goal, we gathered an all-star team of consisting of:

      • CA Rodeo Marketing Manager – Mandy Roth Linquist
      • CA Rodeo Marketing CoordinatorAmanda Gianolini
      • Host – Professional Barrel Racer/Personality – Carly Twisselman
      • McLernon & Co. – Amanda Mclernon, Tia Lorae
      • Cowboy Fresh ClothingAustin Whitmore
      • Mag One MediaAlex Garcia, Alejandro Tuesta, Jovan Limosnero
  • The entire “Where the West Goes Live” operation was stationed right next to all the action–directly behind the bucking chutes at the rodeo. Here, our set was assembled. Our shows were shot from three different 4K Video Cameras, and lit by our ARRI lighting system. We also utilized our live Blackmagic production switcher, pushed to our mac computers using Wirecast Pro to seamlessly stream it live to Facebook. Over the course of 5 days, we completed a total of 16 separate live shows, bringing viewers from all over the country exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, important rodeo information, and interviews with key participants and contributors of the rodeo including:
  • Mayor of Salinas, Mayor Joe Gunter
  • PBR Bull Rider, Brendon Clark
  • California-based rodeo journalist, Kendra Santos and family
  • Current Rodeo President, Brent Eastman
  • Bullfighters Only
  • Reigning World Champion Barrel Racer, Nellie Miller
  • 2017 and 2018 Miss California Rodeo Salinas Queens
  • Ag Against Hunger Mascot Race winner, Lettuce Maximus from Church Brothers
  • + ALL WINNERS of events and exclusive behind-the-scenes interviews
  •  

Here’s the first of the 16 separate live stream videos:

We also compiled and built content/graphics to include in our live stream as events transpired. This provided viewers with important rodeo news, recaps of events, photos, and more as the week went on.  On our final day of streaming, we streamed intermittently all day, as we interviewed winners of each event as they received their prizes.

We’re honored to have been entrusted with the task to provide our top-quality video production services to the California Rodeo and it’s fans from all over. Whether you need video production or digital marketing services, we’ve got the resources for the job. We can’t wait to do this again very soon.

To get a more behind the scenes look from OUR point of view at the rodeo, we have an Instagram Highlight on @magonemedia labeled CA Rodeo Salinas 2018, to see how it all went down.