Far as I know, show management leases state, county, city or privately owned facilities for shows. They, the facility operators, may own and operate a horse park/equestrian center year round but they do not manage the USEF rateds themselves.
For one thing, the show managers generally own the dates, can move the show location and the mileage rule does not allow much competition for new show dates.
For another, the facility is staffed to operate 24/7/365 and the shows take up a very small percentage of that time, not enough to pay show specialists. The core group of those folks work for the management companies that lease the place.
There are a few exceptions and local level shows are managed by whoever runs the barn’s employees and volunteers. But, basically, a handful of management companies and a few individuals come in to manage and staff most of the office positions…and they don’t pay that well even if the managers/ management companies find their services quite lucrative.
I would think your best bet would be to directly contact the big USEF show management companies, not facilities that lease the place out to those management companies. There’s only 2 really big ones and a handful of smaller managers that account for managing and staffing the vast majority of USEF Nationally rated shows.
You might branch out to the Breed show world, specifically AQHA. I have no idea but there are more of those shows, many of the big ones are at the same venues as USEF or very similar, somebody manages those. The QH Congress is the biggest horse show in the world, runs for about 3 weeks and pretty sure Ohio owns the facility but does not manage horse shows. Oklahoma City too, who manages Worlds and Youth Worlds? How about the Arabian Worlds? Reining shows? Snaffle Bit Futurity up in Reno?
Look into those options. Imagine flexible schedule, no weekends off and travel will be involved. Life will be more in the trenches then a comfy office and the paycheck expectations need to be real world based.
Go online and look for the prize lists for QH worlds, they are about now. Congress will be up soon, likewise the SBF, Reining Finals, Arab stuff-all between now and November. The manager or management company will be listed with the entry info. Go from there.
I would also dig around and see if you can’t volunteer to help in the office at a local show, more as an observer to start. Managing shows is about bookkeeping more then anything else. Followed by rule compliance and good frontline public contact skills. Get some practical experience, make some contacts, learn it bottom up.
