Many people flock to Las Vegas for a shot to hit the jackpot, but next spring there’s a new competition there: the BBQ World Cup.
Pitmasters are lining up for their chance to win big. Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor for Texas Monthly, TMBBQ.com, joined the Standard to dish on the competition. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Monthly: Alright, I’ve never heard of this BBQ World Cup. Am I just out of the loop or is this a new thing?
Well, it’s because it’s a brand new thing. Next year will be the first-ever BBQ World Cup. It will be in Las Vegas in April.
But the real big news is the prize money is a million dollars to this competition, which is really unprecedented as far as barbecue competitions go. I think the the largest payout to a grand champion thus far has been like $50,000 at a competition in Memphis, so this is certainly gonna far exceed that.
Absolutely. I mean, I think of barbecue competitions, a lot of times I’m thinking of like the county fair and it’s sort of your uncle out there with his baked beans recipe or something like that.
But this is the main players getting in on this. How is this going to work?
Well, they’re taking in the champions, the grand champions and the reserve grand champions, which is a fancy way of saying first and second place, for a lot of qualifiers all over the country — really, all over world.
But there are more qualifiers in Texas than any other state. We’ve already gotten through three of them actually: one in Seguin, the San Antonio Rodeo, and then Smokin’ on the Rio just happened recently down in Mercedes, Texas.
But there’s still a few more to go in Belton, Texas and then the final qualifier of the year will be in Uvalde at the Briscoe Ranch BBQ Cook-Off in December.
Wow, all right, so are like restaurants getting in on this that don’t usually pay attention to these barbecue competitions? Has this prize money drawn more of these players that otherwise wouldn’t pay attention to their local competition?
Well, that’s really what I’m interested to see of what happens throughout the rest of the year.
So they really just announced that this is happening. The the website for the barbecue World Cup is still sort of under construction in some ways. And so right now, it’s only been like big-time competition barbecue folks.
But as the news gets out about this million-dollar prize, that’s what I’m really curious about — is how many people are going to start flocking to some of these events, especially later in the year, just to try and qualify, because I think there’s only going to be a hundred entries, there’ll be a hundred teams.
So you’ll have a one in 100 shot at a million dollars, which is probably better than anywhere else in Vegas.
That’s amazing. I mean, do we know at all… This is brand new. How this is going to work? I mean, is it going to be like your county fair where there’s like, “okay, briskets are due at this point.” And you’re sending up a little container with your sample to the judges.
Well, so I talked to Shannon Pruitt, who has worked for American Idol, and Scott Erdmann, who has most recently worked for the Las Vegas Raiders, but also worked for The Dallas Cowboys for a decade, and they really teamed up to conceive this whole idea.
And what they can explain so far is that when it comes down to the event, it will be a three-day event. You’ll have a hundred teams competing to make it into the next day, which will only be 50 teams, and then make it in to the next which will bring it down to 25 teams that will then compete head-to-head for that final million-dollar prize.
Did you buy your ticket yet, Daniel? I mean, is this like a thing you wanted to be to go to? And can other people go?
Yeah, you know, really, they haven’t explained much about exactly how it’s going to work, but they’ve said that the ticket prices are going to be pretty low because they want to really draw in fans and families, and they want have a lot more — like live fire demonstrations and just a lot of barbecue activity going on than what goes on at your traditional barbecue competition where if you’re not really friends with some of the cooks, you probably won’t have a very good shot at eating some competition barbecues.
So they’re looking to change that with this event.
