Claiborne may have slipped in the hierarchy as of late in their stallion roster not being what it once was, but they still have tremendous clout and connections as far as making a stallion.
Just about every brrodmare they own has black type in every generation, every friggin one. You ever look at the female family extended pedigree of one of their mares? Geez.
In addition people like the Phipps often board or send mares to Claiborne to be bred.
Its much easier to make a stallion the way they do it, which is the proper way, than it is to make one at a fledgling operation, no matter how much cash is behind it.
Its hard to make a stallion at a place that is relatively new because they usually lack sufficient brodmares to gurantee that the horse will have a nice book through and though. Broodmares are more valuable than sires as a whole right now because of the tremendous amount of mares that have been purchased by Coolmore, the Japanese, and the Sheikhs who are now permanently the property of those operations.
When you have a farm that has the ammo to stand a horse and get him to good mares to start him off right, it gives you a big edge.