Every December, thousands of team ropers pack their trucks and trailers and point them toward Las Vegas. Not for the casinos — for the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale, the richest week on the team roping calendar. Mathews Land & Cattle has a real stake in that week: we produce the outside Super Qualifiers at the Finale itself, alongside qualifiers we run across Texas and New Mexico all year long. Here's the story of how the WSTR became what it is, and where we fit into it.
Where it started
The WSTR was the second act of a career that had already reshaped the sport once. Denny Gentry founded the United States Team Roping Championships in Albuquerque in 1990, building it around a handicap system — every roper assigned a number based on ability, headers and heelers paired up into a combined number, and divisions built around that number so a weekend roper and a near-pro could both compete for real money in the same event. People still call it "golf on horseback": lower numbers make it easier to win, so everyone has a stake.
After stepping away from the USTRC, Gentry and his wife Connie launched the World Series of Team Roping in December 2006, at South Point Arena & Equestrian Center in Las Vegas. The first Finale guaranteed $1.1 million in payouts. By 2008, that number had grown to $2.7 million. The growth didn't slow down from there — by the 2015 season alone, WSTR events were awarding $34 million in purses on the way to that year's Finale, and the event has paid out well over $50 million to contestants across its history.
Why the format matters
The handicap system is the whole reason the WSTR works. A championship roping that only pays out to elite headers and heelers is really just an invitational — most of the roping world never has a realistic shot at the money. The WSTR's numbered divisions mean a rancher who ropes on weekends and a header with a PRCA card can both enter, in different divisions, and both walk away with a legitimate shot at a payout. That's also exactly the idea behind the qualifiers MLC produces: real competition, honest payouts, no side deals.
Today the WSTR runs well over a hundred qualifying events a year across the country. Ropers earn their way into the Finale by competing — and winning — at producer-run qualifiers like the ones MLC puts on in Hamilton, Andrews, Stanton, and San Antonio, Texas.
Mathews Land & Cattle's part in it
MLC isn't just an affiliate that sends a few teams to Vegas each year. We're one of the WSTR's most active producers, running qualifiers across Texas throughout the season — and during Finale week itself, we produce the outside Super Qualifiers at South Point. That's a role we've held since the very first Vegas qualifier in 2014, and it puts MLC cattle and MLC's crew in the middle of the single biggest week in the sport, not just watching from the stands.
Denny Gentry has said publicly that MLC's cattle operation furnishes stock for roughly three dozen WSTR qualifiers a year, South Point included — a level of trust that doesn't get handed out casually in an industry where the whole event depends on consistent, well-conditioned cattle showing up ready to run.
What Finale week is actually like
South Point is a full hotel, casino, and equestrian center rolled into one property, which means most of the roping world can rope, eat, sleep, and watch the next set — all without leaving the building. For ten-plus days every December, the arena runs qualifiers and Super Qualifiers back to back, the parking lot fills with trailers from every state, and the same faces show up year after year. Ropers who first met each other at a random Tuesday-morning short round in Vegas end up hauling to each other's home qualifiers the rest of the year. That's not an accident — it's what happens when a few thousand people who all do the same thing converge on one building for a week and a half straight.
For a producer, it's the same thing at a bigger scale. Running the South Point outside qualifiers means MLC cattle and crew are part of that week for its full run — which is as much a reason we take pride in it as the payout numbers are.
Come see it
The 2026 Finale runs December 3–13 in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you've never made the trip, it's worth seeing once — and if you already know your way around South Point, you already know why we keep coming back. Check our News & Results page for our current qualifier schedule, or get in touch if you're looking to enter one of our ropings.