Word: bulls
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...Ride a bull for a living, and you can be the richest rag doll on earth. All you have to do is last eight excruciating seconds on an agitated 1,800-lb. animal that would like nothing more than to smash you against the sideboards of the arena, fling you off its back and gore you with its horns. On the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) tour, concussions and broken bones are as common as Wranglers and brass-buckled belts. "Most bull riders are what you call gristleheads," says Mike Lee, 23, who has won $2 million in five years...
...Bull riding has always been about macho cowboy culture. Now it has something else going for it: a burgeoning TV audience. On cable channel oln, bull riding is among the highest-rated shows, handily beating broadcasts of NHL hockey games. An nbc broadcast of the PBR finals last year drew more viewers than the average audience for the Stanley Cup finals. And now Fox is on board. After Sunday football games this fall, the network plans to show two PBR events, including a broadcast from the finals in Las Vegas on Oct. 29. "This is a pivotal moment...
...years. From 2003 to '05, the tour's adult fan base soared 48%, to 18 million, far outpacing the growth of nascar or any other major sport, according to Scarborough Research. Sponsorship revenue has nearly tripled since 2000, to $22.5 million. Advertisers like Yamaha seem to be betting that bull riding will hit the big time. They like the demographics of the fans: the average household income is a healthy $66,000, and 40% are women...
...sport does take off, it will be thanks in part to dumb luck. nbc decided in 2002 to stop paying huge fees for sports like NBA basketball and started stacking its lineup with niche events--bull riding, arena football, Champ Car racing. The PBR paid the network for airtime, guaranteeing that nbc wouldn't lose money if no one tuned in. As it turned out, audiences liked watching corn-fed young dudes cling to enraged animals for dear life. "People want to see a big bad som'bitch hoof the s___ out of somebody," says Jerry Nelson, a top bull...
...that Max broke. He said, 'We're here to serve consumers, not egos,' and he designed a product that was salable and had a fluid, sophisticated sexiness, a point of view. Everyone said he was crazy, but he went up there and fought his way in like a pit bull, and here we are today." Where they are, says Marc Cooper, managing director at investment bank Peter J. Solomon Company, is in the right place at the right time with the right product. "It's rare for any company to be as successful as Max is. As of late...