Bull Market

It doesn’t have the following of the NFL, NBA, WWF, or other acronym-bearing sports leagues. But eight years after its launch, the Professional Bull Riders association has developed a nice following, growing from an iffy idea into a legitimate entertainment property.

Bull riding has been the most popular component of traditional rodeos for more than a century, a fact that led the PBR to believe the event could stand on its own four legs. Colorado Springs, CO-based PBR was formed in 1992 by 20 professional “cowboys,” who each ponied up $1,000 to get things rolling. Today, the PBR boasts 800 cowboys from the U.S., Australia, Canada, and Brazil who compete on the PBR Tour, a competition that this year will be held in more than 70 cities and will offer a total purse of more than $6.2 million (up 13 percent from 1999).

The tour is structured into two levels of competition. The primary one is the Bud Light Cup bull riding series, presented (obviously) by Anheuser-Busch. The Cup has grown from eight events in 1994 to this year’s 29 nationally televised competitions, each of which features 45 riders. It culminates with the PBR Bud Light Cup World Championships in Las Vegas in late October. (The PBR’s other competitive track is the Copenhagen chewing tobacco-sponsored Tough Series, 60 smaller events equivalent to a minor league division.)

Filled with as much marketing machismo as it is old-school cowboy bravado, the PBR has quietly built itself a respectable stable of loyal sponsors looking to reach the 500,000 fans who will attend events (and the millions more who will watch them on TV) this year – and who match the demographics of NASCAR fans almost exactly. “Go to a PBR event and it’s the same people,” says Steve Uline, St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch’s group director of sports marketing for Bud Light.

Tying into the PBR gives brand managers a way to reach a group of consumers known for extreme loyalty to their sport (and its sponsors) at a fraction of the cost of a NASCAR alliance. Three-year to five-year sponsorship deals start at $350,000. The PBR, which only accepts all-cash deals, has more than $10 million in sponsorship revenues already booked for 2001, up impressively from the $365,000 it collected in 1995. The organization generates about $20 million in overall revenues annually.

By the way, not everyone in the crowd speaks with a Western twang: 60 percent of the tickets to last year’s World Championships were sold east of the Mississippi.

RIDE `EM, COWBOYS

>From a sponsorship standpoint, the PBR acts much like NASCAR, with brands >allowed to sponsor both events and individual riders. Companies currently >seen around the corral include Wrangler apparel, the city of Las Vegas, >DeWalt Tools, Jack Daniels, Caesar’s Palace, Dodge, AutoZone, Justin >Boots, and Carhart work clothing. There are 18 national sponsors in all.

Like any new sports association, the PBR has worked hard to recruit sponsors of all types, and offers standard signage opportunities as well as such on-site programs as inflatables, ring banners, hospitality tables, exhibit space, retail tie-ins, and co-marketing programs.

Anheuser-Busch is the top bull, with Bud Light as title sponsor and “beer of choice” for the Cup series. The beer maker first became a sponsor in 1994 and last fall signed up through 2002. “Everyone respects cowboys,” says Uline. “And tying into Western-style athletes is obviously a good fit for our brand.”

Bud Light goes beyond signage with regional retail P-O-P efforts and a traveling Bud Light Bull Pen, a section of the stands close to the action that the brand fills with winners from local radio contests. Fourteen winners sit in the pen at each event, and receive premiums and a sweeps entry for a grand-prize trip to the finals in Las Vegas. “It’s quite an experience,” says Uline.

Another national sponsor, DeWalt Tools, uses the sponsorship for its year-round corporate branding efforts. The company precedes the PBR tour around the nation, staging decidedly strange competitions at retail two weeks before each event: Shoppers step up to a two-by-four and are timed by DeWalt staffers as they drill a five-inch screw into the wood using one of the company’s cordless drills. The nine fastest drillers get tickets to the riding event, where they square off once again (while outfitted in DeWalt apparel) for a $500 prize. The four fastest screwers head to Vegas this fall to compete for $5,000.

David Reimann, DeWalt’s event marketing manager, says the sponsorship has given his brand solid exposure at an affordable price. “Other companies laughed at us when we began sponsoring bull riding,” he says. “They’re not laughing anymore. We’ve definitely gotten our bang for the buck.”

Events are televised weekly on The Nashville Network (TNN), which has rights through 2002. TNN expanded its coverage of PBR-sanctioned events (which Brian Hughes, the cable channel’s vp-programming, calls “one of the world’s original `extreme’ sports”) earlier this year, boosting telecasts from one hour to 90 minutes.

Growth should continue on the broadcast coverage and marketing partnership ends. But don’t expect PBR to add many more events to the schedule, due to the real danger involved in the sport. “We can’t expand by too many more events than we have now,” explains PBR president Randy Bernard. “Our cowboys would get hurt.”

Other competitive tours could launch, as could extension sports. (PBR recently hooked up with event bigwig SFX, Inc., New York City, to develop future programming.) And Bernard says his organization is working on more promotional opportunities for sponsors.

And that ain’t no bull.