Stampede during day one of the Cheyenne PBR Teams event. Photo: Josh Homer/Bull Stock Media
Bull riding is one of the oldest and most dangerous sports in America. Now, the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) is reintroducing the sport in a different way.
The new PBR Team Series offers a unique experience for bull riding and rodeo fans as they can follow their favorite bull riders competing on teams to earn points and win games. There are currently eight teams competing, one of which being the Nashville Stampede, the newest pro sports team in Music City.
“It’s been a long time in the making,” Nashville Stampede CEO & General Manager Tina Battock shares in an interview with The Sports Credential. “PBR has been talking about this for several years–decades even. It’s been an idea in the background. The fact that we’ve been working so hard on it for the last year and it’s finally happening, we’re really excited to be here and get it launched.”
The team was acquired by the Texas-based media company Morris Communications of which Battock has been the President of since 2016. Originally, Morris wanted to acquire a Texas-based team, but as things changed and a Dallas/Fort-Worth team was already picked up, Nashville became the clear choice.
“The questions became where’s a great place to go? Where’s the good market? Where is the right audience? Where has a great venue? What aligns with the kind of team that we want to have from sort of an ethos standpoint, and where could we pull off a really good event?” Battock explains. “Nashville emerged as the front runner for us right away.
Kaique Pacheco. Photo: Andy Watson/Bull Stock Media
“I would love to say there was a lot of analysis and data that went into it, but it was one of those super intuitive, gut decisions where it happened that the Nashville event was coming up about six weeks after we had flagged it as our market. We came here and as soon as we saw how engaged the fan base was, how welcoming the city was and how accommodating Bridgestone was to work with, we thought this is our place. It just instantly felt like home and it fell into place for us.”
The Nashville Stampede joins the Carolina Cowboys, Oklahoma Freedom, Austin Gamblers, Kansas City Outlaws, Texas Rattlers, Arizona Ridge Riders, and Missouri Thunder as first teams in the inaugural team series. These teams are set with multiple world-class bull riders who compete head-to-head against each other.
Throughout the year, these teams will face off in games and the riders with the best accumulative scores will be awarded a win. This new format offers the sport a more competitive and group aspect for average sports fans who may not be familiar with PBR.
The team is led by two-time PBR champion and coach Justin McBride. McBride is one of the most successful bull riders in the sport’s history and was inducted into the Bull Riding Hall of Fame in 2020. After retiring from the sport in 2008, he remained around as a TV broadcaster until he saw the opportunity to coach.
Nashville Stampede head coach Justin McBride with bull rider Joao Henrique Lucas during day two of the Cheyenne PBR Teams event. Photo: Josh Homer/Bull Stock Media.
“For me, I had a pretty good job in TV,” McBride notes. “I was still around the sport I loved and I got to break it down every week. I really enjoyed what I was doing, so it had to be a good fit. It had to be the right team. When I spoke with Tina and learned a little more about their company and about what they stood for, that was the team that was the best fit for me.”
McBride is very familiar with Nashville as he recorded two records in Music City and performed at the Grand Ole Opry in 2009. He also worked on a weekly live TV show for RFD-TV for two years, so Nashville is not a new city or market for McBride.
“Between cutting the records and doing the little show on RFD, I’ve been in Nashville a lot over the years,” McBride says with a chuckle. “The PBR has been having a great event in Nashville for two plus decades. It’s one of the standout events every year on the regular season tour, so I’m really excited to give Nashville something of their own when it comes to the sport. I hope in the years to come that we can have more than one home event. I hope it turns into where we have several home events throughout the course of the year.”
So far, there have been seven games played over three weekends. Each team gets the opportunity to host a weekend in their respective city.
Next up is Music City on Aug. 19-21 and the team could not be more excited.
2018 PBR World Champion and current Stampede rider Kaique Pacheco. Photo: Josh Homer/Bull Stock Media.
“It will be great,” adds former PBR World Champion and current No. 2 bull rider in the world Kaique Pacheco. “It’s making me more excited. We had a good start in Cheyenne.”
The Stampede started off the season with a win in Cheyenne, Wyoming against the Carolina Cowboys when veteran rider Ryan Dirteater clinched the game winning ride. Since then, the team has won one more game while dropping five.
They sit in sixth place with a record of 2-5-0, but with the upcoming home series in Nashville, that could all change.
Along with veteran riders such as Pacheco, Dirteater and newly signed three-time world champion Silvano Alves, 18-year-old Jaxton Mortensen joins the Stampede’s practice team.
Mortensen has been riding his whole life and has already seen some success, winning the the Yavapai Bottle Gas Mile High PBR Presented by Navajo Nation And Coors Light in Arizona, his home state. When the opportunity comes, he could become one of the sport’s next big riders.
“My grandpa is a world champion bareback rider and my dad actually rode with McBride back in the day in the PBR,” Mortensen shares. “When McBride needed another guy on the team, he called my dad and those were the first talks. He called me and asked me to send them some videos, and he asked if I really wanted to do it and if I was serious. I was like, ‘Heck, yeah! I got Justin McBride, one of the heroes of the sport, calling me to ask me to be on his team!'”
These athletes have rode all their lives, relying on no one but themselves to perform. The team series changes all of that.
Now these bull riders are working on a team, practicing and learning from each other with a common goal: win together.
Nashville Stampede head coach Justin McBride talking with riders Ryan Dirteater and Kaique Pacheco during day one of the Cheyenne PBR Teams event. Photo: Josh Homer/Bull Stock Media.
“That’s really important to us,” Pacheco explains. “We don’t ride for ourselves right now. We’re always working together to build a team and everybody’s doing better and working hard like a team. We’re not by ourselves anymore.”
McBride is also excited about how this season will allow him to coach and develop these veteran and young riders throughout the season and for years to come.
“So far, it’s been awesome. I can’t wait to see the growth of these guys,” McBride notes. “When you’re talking about your star five, you’re talking about really good bull riders. They are professionals and very good at what they do already. So, for me, it’s just trying to get them a little bit better every day. We’re getting guys that want to grind and get a little bit better, and I can’t wait to see just how good they get.”
With a new team coming to a hot city like Nashville, it would seem that its growth would be easy when looking at the growth of clubs like Nashville SC. However, because bull riding is a rather niche sport and they only have one home event, it will take some hard work and time to grow both the organization and the fandom.
But the Stampede is up to the task.
Ryan Dirteater. Photo: Andy Watson/Bull Stock Media
“We do have a challenge because, at this point, we don’t necessarily have a home base here,” Battock says. “The way that that series is structured, we’re only here once a year. Going forward, our plan is to really find ways for us to organically integrate into the city. We have great relationships with our sports team partners. We’re really just getting acquainted with our counterparts here and focusing on who good partners would be.
“As we have more time going into next year, we want to find ways to be more involved in the community, and demonstrate the kind of team we want to be and the kind of company that we are. We’re a family owned business and always have been. It’s really important to the family ownership that we find avenues to be involved in and give back to the community.”
Bull riding is an extremely exciting sport that wants to continue to grow, and the team series offers a platform for the sport to grow into the mainstream, McBride explains.
“This team concept is going to let people be able to digest it the way they’re used to viewing other sports,” he sums. “They might not know all the ins and outs of how you stay on a bull or the technical side of it, but they can understand, ‘If this last guy gets bucked off, my team does not win. He’s got to make the eight seconds for my team to win.’ It makes it really easy to follow and not only just follow a guy, but you’re following that team.
“You are visually recognizing the Nashville Stampede, their colors, and their riders. It’s a way for fans to really sink their teeth into bull riding and become fans, not only of the sport, but of these individual teams.”
