Texas Show Pass achieves grand champion status at the San Antonio Stock Show

More than 16,000 entries, 14,000 exhibitors and 3,400 families used Capital Farm Credit’s Texas Show Pass at this year’s San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, making the registration, payment and check-in process seamless for the thousands of people who took part in this year’s show.

“We hit it out of the park. It was a tremendous success, and this is just the beginning of many shows that will use it,” said Vidya Sandela, Senior vice president of Digital Product and Technology Delivery. “We want to take it to the next level from here.”

Texas Show Pass is a digital platform designed by Capital Farm Credit to streamline livestock show participation across Texas. It was the brainchild of CFC Chief Digital Officer Joseph Paulraj to create a centralized platform for all livestock shows that would support end-to-end processes, minimize manual data entry, enhance data integrity and provide secured data storage.

“We’re proud to keep moving forward with initiatives that support the next generation of agriculture and celebrate Texas’ long-standing stock show tradition,” Paulraj said. “By securely storing and reusing data across events and validations, we’re able to simplify processes and cut down on errors. It means less manual entry and stronger, more reliable data overall.”

Live at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo

While Texas Show Pass was used at other shows last year, the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo was the first event in which all features of the app were fully deployed, from registration to payment processing to check-ins.

“I don’t know that the forward-facing public or the exhibitors see a difference, but we see that it is much different,” Brian Faris, competitive events director of the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, said during the show held in February. “The control we have with Show Pass is remarkable. We can go in, get the information that we need.”

The digital capabilities provided by Texas Show Pass has eliminated mountains of paperwork that the stock show organizations have to keep on file for at least 12 years – paperwork that requires lots of storage for so many documents.

Helping families and exhibitors statewide

The app is a gamechanger for families who have multiple entries into various shows. Just one account is created, which can then be used for multiple members of the same family, as well as multiple stock show entries.

Feedback from those who used the app has been mostly positive, and improvements will continue to be made as other shows and agricultural groups implement Texas Show Pass in their events, Sandala said.

Kerinne Herber, senior vice president of Real Estate and Facilities at CFC and a mom of five, said her three youngest children are actively showing livestock, and she has had as many as four competing at the same time. Currently, they show pigs and participate in the Gillespie County, Hill District Grandstand, San Antonio gilt, San Antonio barrow, Houston barrow and Austin barrow shows.

Kerinne’s husband, Treff, who handles the family’s FFA and 4-H show logistics, said using Texas Show Pass is very convenient.

“Texas Show Pass represents a much-needed advancement in stock show entry systems,” Treff said. “It significantly improved efficiency, reduced completion time and alleviated stress throughout the process. It was a platform that delivered a seamless experience from start to finish.”

Boots on the ground

To make sure Texas Show Pass ran smoothly at the San Antonio show, CFC’s Technical Lead Shobha Pulluru and Senior Software Developer Ramya Manoharan attended the show and worked diligently with the San Antonio team amid constantly changing requirements.

They made sure to deliver the solution on time, supporting the app after hours, and ensuring smooth operations by being onsite on launch day. In addition, Quality Assurance Tester Charlet Xavier thoroughly tested the application across multiple releases throughout the project.

Thanks to Texas Show Pass, thousands of people were able to check in via the app simultaneously, and Texas Show Pass eliminated the long check-in lines at previous shows.

For Manoharan, it was her first stock show experience and one she won’t soon forget.

“You get to see like behind the scenes where so many things are happening. There are people bringing their trailers and bringing the animals in,” she said. “It was an insightful experience for me, because until then, it was just the business terms that I was hearing while developing the app. When you go there, you see it in person.”

Bailey Bozeman, competitive events coordinator for the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, said the CFC developers listened to their needs and customized the app specifically for their show.

“They have been so great to work with,” she said. “And them actually coming down and being able to see it in action was amazing.”

More to come

In upcoming years, other shows plan to leverage Texas Show Pass, including the Hill District Grandstand (which also used it in 2025), Heart of Texas, the Austin Rodeo and the San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo.

Feedback is being gathered about the app and enhancements will be made over the coming months.

CFC is a proud supporter of Texas youth in agriculture and invests over $1million annually in livestock shows, 4-H and FFA programs. Through its AgStart loan program, young participants and their families can get financial assistance to purchase and care for livestock.

For more information about Texas Show Pass, visit texasshowpass.com.