There will be a local voice behind the microphone when Canadian Finals Rodeo comes to Red Deer this fall.

During a press conference at Westerner Park on Saturday to unveil its new brand, CFR announced that Sylvan Lake’s Brett Gardiner will be the rodeo announcer for the next five years.

“It’s really special to me because this is home for us,” said Gardiner.

Gardiner’s rodeo career started inside the arena as a cowboy.

“I wasn’t very good so I quickly had to find another outlet or another industry to be in if I wanted to stay in the rodeo game,” he said.

He’s now been an announcer for 15 years.

“How could you possibly not have somebody like Brett Gardiner as your announcer? We’re really excited to be able to do that. Brett is a world-class announcer. He’s going to do a fabulous job for us,” said Ben Antifaiff, CEO of Westerner Park.

Antifaiff said the second announcer to join Gardiner will be decided by the Canadian Professional Rodeo Association.

The key to rodeo announcing, Gardiner said, is reading the crowd. Some audiences understand the sport, others need someone to explain it to them.

“Do we need to take more of an educational approach or is it more of an entertainment approach. I think the best announcers in the world that I look up to have this sixth sense about reading and understanding an audience,” he said.

“If you can give the crowd what they want, I think you’ll be very successful as an announcer.”

Once CFR 45 comes to Westerner Park on Oct. 30, Gardiner said as many as 3,000 visitors could be first-time spectators. He’s excited about introducing them to the sport.

“When we get to welcome new people to the rodeo world and we get a new set of fans, we’ve got a wonderful opportunity to show them the sport that we love,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Westerner Park received $250,000 from the provincial government through the Major Fairs Program, which helps ag societies host events.

“We’ve never had that level of funding from the provincial government for an event of that nature so we’re very appreciative of that support. Those funds are going to go directly into CFR programming,” said Antifaiff.

“I think it sends a strong message that rodeo is important to our central Alberta community and these types of major events are huge tourism activities.”