Imagine a weekend in the not-too-distant future when a fan could buy a dual-event ticket to a UFC fight one night and a Professional Bull Riders event the next.
Mark Shapiro, chief content officer for WME-IMG, which owns the two properties, mused over the possibility recently, marveling at the opportunities it would present for the bull-riding series, the longtime niche sport that the agency acquired in April 2015 for a reported $100 million.
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The PBR took its Helldorado Days to the Las Vegas Strip at an outdoor arena across from the Luxor hotel.
Photo by: PBR / BULL STOCK MEDIA
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In the 18 months since that acquisition, WME-IMG has tried to leverage the PBR’s Americana ethos to vault it near the mainstream. Since the acquisition, the PBR’s Built Ford Tough Series, whose season-ending World Finals start early next month in Las Vegas, has doubled in value, according to Shapiro, thanks in part to new distribution channels, 13 event attendance records and growing consumption metrics.
Along the way, WME-IMG, which has taken to a strategy of owning properties outright in recent years rather than just representing them, is starting to pepper in the sort of cross-promotional muscle that it believes will unlock added value.
“Rarely in my business career have I been involved with a property that has doubled in value in just 18 months — and that’s what we’ve done here,” Shapiro said. “Some people go, ‘Bull riding? What?’ [But] that’s where WME-IMG really works: We’re in entertainment; we’re in fashion; we’re in culinary; we’re in art; we’re in all these areas that ultimately provide unique showcase platforms to expand the PBR audience.”
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The Built Ford Tough Series is averaging about 8,500 fans per night this season for a 7 percent uptick, and that rises to 13,000 for the series’ four majors. To grow that, WME-IMG has installed local marketing teams to sell sponsorship and tickets as well as develop social and digital media plans. That includes 21 new positions in cities that include New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Nashville and Sacramento. The series also has generated new corporate partnerships, including deals with Heinz and Frontier Communications, plus media partnerships like the one it struck with Netflix to air the six-part “Fearless” series on the PBR’s growing base of Brazilian riders. The PBR has 25 total corporate partners.
The PBR, in its fifth year with CBS Sports and also eyeing an over-the-top Western-lifestyle network to launch next year, has seen a 12 percent jump in ratings this season to an average of 1.3 million viewers.
Dan Weinberg, CBS Sports executive vice president of programming, attributed the rise to three factors: the series’ inherent qualities built on eight-second rides that fit with audiences that have increasingly short attention spans; CBS’s programming moves, including putting it on Sunday afternoons after NFL games; and WME-IMG’s influence.
“To say they’re having a good year is an understatement; they’re having a terrific year — and it’s indicative of the continued development and growth,” Weinberg said of the PBR. “It’s bite-sized, and that’s more important than ever, so it plays well across all sorts of viewer demos and distribution channels.”
Similar to its plans with the UFC, which it acquired this year for approximately $4 billion, WME-IMG has designs to grow the PBR’s presence internationally through events and domestically through cross-promotion within the company’s entertainment channels. Internationally, the PBR is most focused on Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China and Australia, the last of which “has delivered and then some,” according to Shapiro.
Also similar to the approach it is taking with the UFC, WME-IMG is increasingly tapping into its celebrity connections to amplify the message around the PBR. The most prominent example of that was getting Steven Tyler, a WME-IMG client, to record a new anthem for the series.
“I’ve seen real positive change, an aggressive growth movement and the willingness to grow and advance the sport,” said Jared Allen, the former NFL star who is now a PBR bull contractor.
As far as aligning the two cultures, coalescing a Hollywood agency with a Colorado-based Western sports league may not be viewed as the easiest transition. But according to Sean Gleason, CEO of the PBR who has been with the organization for 17 years, the coming together has been smooth.
“Not one hiccup — it’s been a pretty straight alignment of priorities; everyone involved has a growth mandate,” Gleason said. “When you share the growth mandate, we haven’t run into cultural challenges and issues. We are after the same thing.”
On the docket for the series as it starts to look toward 2017 is the coming OTT network, which Shapiro said is in the early stages of development. He declined to disclose prospective partners. The PBR also has the addition of Real Time Pain Relief as title sponsor of its secondary series and a continued focus on international expansion to look forward to.
“It’s matched our expectations, but there’s only more that we can do,” Shapiro said. “When you put [something] into the WME-IMG pipeline, you can expect those sort of returns.”
