Occasionally we check in with our friends at the PBR to see how their disruptive models are working. This year it is the team concept for bull riding. So far, so good. Every day more than 100 people relocate to Austin, Texas.
Last week in Republic Square, a downtown park where in 1839 the booming Texas capitol city was founded, the city was introduced to its second professional sports team, following Austin FC.
The official unveiling of the Austin Gamblers, a start-up bull riding team in the upcoming PBR Team Series, had added poignancy, coming in the support of a man who 38 years earlier had started a computer company about two miles east of the breezy park in his dorm room at the University of Texas.
Michael Dell, now chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, was announced as an additional team owner of the Austin Gamblers. He joins technology investors Egon and Abby Durban in owning the Gamblers, adding to a savvy and highly successful PBR Teams ownership group that includes Hollywood disrupters (Thomas Tull, owner of the Arizona Ridge Riders), media moguls (Billy Morris of Morris Communications who owns the Nashville Stampede), retail impresarios (John Fisher, owner of the Gap and the Texas Rattlers), wildly successful entrepreneurs (Phil Pulley of Bad Boy Mowers who owns the Kansas City Outlaws), NASCAR legends (Richard Childress, operating the Carolina Cowboys) and western outdoor visionaries (Johnny Morris, owner of Bass Pro Shops and the Missouri Thunder).
Success in team sports is a local game, and co-owner Durban made a brilliant move in tapping veteran sports marketer JJ Gottsch as Gamblers CEO, charged with building a new fan base in Austin and beyond.
Gottsch, originally from Nebraska, has spent more than two decades creating successful sports franchises in Texas, including minor league baseball operations with Ryan Sanders entertainment. Most recently, he served as Chairman of Austin’s Sports Commission.
Gottsch says that Durban and Dell have excelled at building respected, enduring global businesses through using analytics and technology to tap opportunity others might not see. In bull riding, that could mean better matching riders with bulls who like other word-class athletes, have mappable tendencies.
The Gamblers will play seven other teams in 5-on-5 bull riding games at each event weekend in a 10-event regular season starting in late July, hosting their three-day home stand at the glittering new Moody Center at University of Texas on August 26-28.
Gottsch believes the immediate acceptance of soccer’s Austin FC in the growing state’s most diverse city foreshadows the strong potential for a global sport like bull riding to field a team in central Texas, the heart of cowboy country.
“We hope to capture some of the excitement generated by the soccer team,” Gottsch said. “There’s a reason bull riding is the final event of a rodeo; there’s nothing like it. On top of the inherent thrills of team bull riding, we will create an amazing sports entertainment experience including a food and music festival with an Austin flare. Establishing a team here with the outstanding ownership group we have is an incredible opportunity to elevate the extraordinary things PBR has done over the last three decades.”
At the launch event on Republic Square, PBR Commissioner and CEO Sean Gleason recalled the important role Austin has already played in the sport’s growth.
In 2001, PBR had arranged for NBC to carry its bull riding event from the Frank Erwin Center.
PBR paid the network $600,000 for a two-hour block.
“It was a gamble at the time,” Gleason said. “We could have bankrupted the company. But it was something we had to do.”
If PBR could generate a 1.0 Nielsen television rating, disaster would be avoided. The Austin event pulled a 2.1, and the sport was launched to another level, eventually winding up on CBS, through a deal negotiated by the late great Barry Frank of IMG.
Gleason and PBR remain bullish on the state of Texas; so much so that the organization moved the 2022 World Finals from Las Vegas to Dickies Arena in Fort Worth for the first time, competing in two weekends May (May 12-13, 19-21) with a Paul McCartney concert mid-week. (The PBR Team Series Championship will be held in Las Vegas November 4-6.)
The day after PBR World Finals at Dickies Arena, the league will hold its inaugural rider draft, determining each team’s roster.
The Gamblers, by virtue of winning the draft lottery at Madison Square Garden in January, have the first pick.
The team has said they have their eyes on two-time and reigning PBR World Champion Jose Vitor Leme, a former semi-professional soccer star in Brazil until he switched over to bulls at the age of 17.
Leme, whose 2021 championship season is considered the most dominant in PBR’s 29-year history, is not just a generational athlete. He’s the kind of leader of guts and integrity teams want in the locker room.
Gottsch is an idea factory. It’s not hard to imagine creative crossover marketing someday between Austin FC and the champion bull rider many claim is already the best ever — a soft-spoken, humble yet fiery competitor, who punts his helmet like a soccer ball after every big ride.
