Case Study: How a Local Nonprofit Raised $40,000 for Restaurants with Eventgroove
Modernizing a Montana Tradition
How Eventgroove empowered the Ravalli County Fair & Rodeo
The Ravalli County Fair & Rodeo
The Ravalli County Fair & Rodeo is a sprawling, high-traffic event in Hamilton, Montana, featuring over 15 buildings and multiple high-stakes arenas like the Hornung Arena and Main Event Arena. For the 2025 season, the fair board needed to move beyond fragmented legacy systems to a unified rodeo management platform capable of handling nearly 40,000 tickets while ensuring a seamless experience for a mobile-first audience.
The Challenge: Operational Blind Spots
Before partnering with Eventgroove, the fair faced significant logistical hurdles:
Fragmented Reporting: Organizers struggled to reconcile online pre-sales with a massive volume of offline/cash transactions in real-time.
Gate Friction: With four major entry points (North, West, East, and South Pedestrian gates), managing attendee flow manually led to bottlenecks and staffing uncertainty.
Volunteer Security: The fair relies heavily on seasonal help, creating a need for a system that allowed volunteers to scan event tickets without accessing sensitive administrative data.
The Solution: A Digital Command Center
The fair board implemented the Eventgroove Dashboard to act as their central “source of truth.”
Integrated Sales & POS
The platform managed 38,553 total tickets, effortlessly balancing a near 50/50 split between online (15,889) and offline (15,765) sales. This gave the board instant clarity on total attendance without waiting for post-event manual audits.
Secure Volunteer Empowerment
Using PIN-protected Attendee Services, organizers enabled volunteers to assist with scanning and attendee lookups on mobile devices. This specialized feature ensured that security remained high while gate operations scaled instantly.
Real-Time Entry Management
Organizers monitored 24,545 total check-ins as they happened. By tracking specific counts—such as the 12,346 Adult Day Tickets scanned—the team had instant visibility into attendance patterns by time of day, enabling smarter staffing decisions throughout the event.
“One of the critical things for why we used Eventgroove was accountability. We use those numbers to see which day had the most people come in, what hour, what gate. It gave us real time [data] to show what we actually saw matched our numbers.”
Christy Schram-Duggan
Fair Volunteer Manager
Ravalli County Fair & Rodeo
The Results by the Numbers
Total Tickets Sold: 38,553
Total Attendees Processed: 24,545
Mobile Device Usage: 75.8%
Ticket Types Managed: 8
Geographic Reach: 10+ States
The Outcome: A Blueprint for Success
By embracing a mobile-first strategy (75.8% of users accessed the fair via phone), the Ravalli County Fair not only reduced gate wait times but also gained deep insights into their audience. The ability to see exactly where their visitors came from—led by Hamilton, Denver, and Seattle—has provided the fair board with a data-backed roadmap for 2026 and beyond.