Bucking bulls and cowboy hats aren’t the typical sights seen at Desert Diamond Arena, but the Arizona Ridge Riders, along with seven other Professional Bull Riders teams, are stampeding their way into Glendale for the Ridge Rider Days teams event this weekend.Ridge Rider Days takes place Friday through Sunday (Oct. 4-6) at the arena. PBR (Professional Bull Riders) teams will go head-to-head and battle eight seconds at a time, for the Ridge Rider Days title. PBR team events showcase the world’s best riders competing against each other in 5-on-5 bull riding games during a 13-event season. The teams’ regular season wins and losses will determine the seeding heading into the PBR Teams Championship playoffs, which is held Oct. 18-20 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The inaugural season ran from June to November 2022 and featured eight founding teams. The teams played a 10-week regular season, which culminated in a postseason tournament. Since then, fans have seen two teams crowned champions, the Nashville Stampede and the Texas Rattlers. This season marks the introduction of two new teams, the Oklahoma Wildcatters and the New York Mavericks, and with it, PBR is continuing to see massive growth.PBR growthSince the introduction of PBR Teams in 2022, overall ticket sales have seen a 22% increase. The new format has opened bull riding to new audiences and has helped the league earn support from brands like Yeti, Monster Energy, Cooper Tire and Michelob Ultra. Last May, CBS Sports and PBR extended their media rights agreement through 2030.“The Teams format has positioned the sport in a way that it’s never been positioned before,” said Casey Lane, general manager of the Arizona Ridge Riders. “Typically, rodeo and bull riding has been packaged in a format that’s very entertaining and the amazing athleticism of the athletes is always on display, but it’s not necessarily been put together in the way that mainstream fans are used to following sports. And Teams sort of solves that problem for us.”As the team’s general manager, Lane is closely involved, working on roster management and constructing riders’ contracts. He spends a lot of time on production for events such as Ridge Rider Days and helps with marketing and ticket sales initiatives. He was also largely responsible for making the team’s latest draft selection in May.Arizona rider joins teamThe Ridge Riders’ most recent addition came from the No. 17 pick of the 2024 New Rider Draft. 22-year-old JaCauy Hale grew up in Ganado, Arizona within the Navajo Nation, where he was born into a rodeo family. “Us Navajos, we are always around livestock,” Hale said. “So it’s something I always grew up with. I was always around horses and bulls and cows and all that, so growing up, I always knew I was going to be a cowboy.”The Ridge Riders’ fr …
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