Professional Bull Riders Arrive at MSG on a Sponsorship Roll
The Professional Bull Riders (PBR), one of the largest bull-riding leagues in the world, is coming to Madison Square Garden in New York City this weekend for the sixth event of the 2024 Unleash the Beast tour.
In the competition, 30 cowboys will be competing for a $250,000 purse. They will try to stay on top of a bull for eight seconds to score points in each round. Riders with the most points compete in the PBR World Finals, which takes place over two weekends in May. Winning the global title earns the champion a golden buckle and a $1 million bonus from Monster Energy, the official league partner of PBR since 2013.
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But no matter who takes home the big prize, the real winner is the organization. PBR CEO Sean Gleason said the league has nearly doubled its sponsorship business since the pandemic and has increased its number of national partners by 70%.
“PBR has been a growing sport for 30 years, but in the years coming out of COVID, I think we won over a lot of fans by keeping our business going during the pandemic,” Gleason said in a phone interview. “And then, coming out of COVID, we had a great message: PBR is hard-working athletes risking everything for the entertainment of our fans.”
PBR, which is owned by Endeavor (NYSE: PBR), kicks off the year with a dozen partnerships—including new deals with Anheuser-Busch, Curt Trailer Hitches, BeatBox Beverages, GOVX, Lincoln Electric, Morgan & Morgan and Walmart Health & Wellness—and has renewed partnerships with Monster Energy, Tractor Supply Company, US Air Force Reserve, US Border Patrol and Yeti.
The growing interest from the sponsors is due to increased viewership. Last season’s attendance was over 1.1 million, and for the first time, PBR reached 30 million unique viewers on CBS. The league signed a 10-year broadcast deal with the network in 2018 and inked a contract with its first Spanish-language media partner, Univision, in 2023.
In addition to the United States, the league has tours in Brazil, Australia and Canada, and it also hosts some events in Mexico.
This week, the organization and Anheuser-Busch announced a new partnership which will stretch across PBR’s four big domestic tours: the Unleash the Beast, PBR Teams, Pendleton Whisky Velocity and PBR Challenger series.
“Anheuser-Busch initially has supported PBR and rodeo cowboys in 1993 when they signed on as PBR’s first title sponsor,” Gleason said. “They also stepped up to help PBR pay the first $1 million bonus to a Western sports athlete.” A-B, which was the sport’s biggest national partner with the Bud Light Cup Series, exited the series in 2002.
As part of this partnership, the organization will award an additional Michelob Ultra Bonus to the rider with the highest-marked score at each Unleash the Beast event, all Unleash the Beast champions and each event MVP in the PBR Teams League. The total bonus is $300,000.
A-B is not the only partner that strengthened its ties with PBR ahead of the MSG event. Monster Energy announced it will also sponsor each individual team in the PBR Teams league, a new team series with eight teams in eight markets competing in five-on-five bull riding games that runs across 11 events from July through October. Monster is also the title sponsor of PBR’s top series in Australia; 2024 will be the sixth season for the Monster Energy Tour Down Under.
The bull riding action in New York will begin with Round 1 at 7:45 p.m. ET on Friday. Round 2 will take place at 6:45 p.m. ET on Saturday and the championship round at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday. Following the third round on Sunday, the riders’ scores will be totaled, with the top 12 riders advancing to the championship round for one more ride and a chance at the event title.
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