The 2018 Miss Arkansas USA competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of Arkansas in the Miss USA pageant.
The state pageant was directed by Premier Pageants from 2002 to 2007 before becoming part of the Vanbros organization, headquartered in Kansas, in 2007. Vanbros has chosen Bentonville, Arkansas as the new host city of the pageant from 2007 and will be extending the competition from one day to three in the hopes of encouraging more contestants.[1]
Despite an early run of semi-finalist placings, Arkansas has not been greatly successful at Miss USA. From their only Miss USA title win in 1982 by Terri Lea Utley of Cabot, Arkansas did not place in the Miss USA pageant until Jessica Furrer reached the top 15 in 2005.
Three Miss Arkansas-USA titleholders were former Miss Arkansas Teen USA titleholders who competed at Miss Teen USA
Every year, each state holds a preliminary competition to choose their delegate for the Miss USA pageant. In some states (such as Texas and Florida), local pageants are also held to determine delegates for the state competition. The state winners hold the title "Miss State USA" for the year of their reign.
The most successful state is Texas, which has had the most semi-finalists and winners, including five consecutive Miss USA titleholders during the 1980s.[22] Other successful states include California, New York, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. The least successful states are Delaware, placing only once in 2015; Montana, which has not placed since the 1950s; South Dakota, which has only placed three times (the last time in 2016), and Wyoming, which gained only its second placement in 2010. The only state which has produced more than one Miss Universe is South Carolina.
The Miss Universe Organization licenses out the state pageants to pageant directors, who in some cases are responsible for more than one state. The most well established directorial groups are RPM Productions, created in 1980 (Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina), and Vanbros, created in the early 1990s (Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma). Future Productions direct the most states, seven, across the Midwest and Rockies.