On most weeks, two-time World Champion bull rider Jim Sharp flies his small plane from his North Texas home to Oklahoma City to visit his 10-month-old son, Will.
Sharp, 44, a PBR founding father from Stephenville, Texas, has the time and the financial resources to regularly make the 265-mile trip, because he’s among the original cast of 20 bull riders who invested $1,000 in 1992 to launch what became the world’s most prominent and richest bull riding organization.
That small group of cowboys who held their stock over 15 years became multi-millionaires when Spire Capital Partners of New York acquired a majority ownership of the Professional Bull Riders in 2007.
Sharp was one cowboy who cashed in and became a wealthy middle-aged retiree. Sharp, who was inducted into the PBR Ring of Honor earlier this month during ceremonies in Pueblo, Colo., said he’s grateful that PBR leaders made it possible for him to receive a mammoth return on his investment.
“It means a lot,” Sharp said. “If I had to work an 8-to-5 job every day, I wouldn’t have the time to go and see my little boy as much as I get to see him.”
When the top bull riders of the early 1990s formed the PBR, many high-profile cowboys were forced to find work following brilliant athletic careers. Though they qualified for the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas year after year, numerous contestants turned small annual profits because they faced soaring road costs and entry fees.
“In the old days, you didn’t make that much money, and you spent a lot of it traveling and going to the rodeos,” Sharp said. “After you were done riding bulls, you had to go make money somewhere else. I knew some of the bottom guys who made the NFR who won just enough to cover their expenses throughout the year, because it took a lot of money going up and down the road.”
But Sharp, who became the first cowboy to stay on all 10 bulls at the National Finals in 1988, was among a savvy group of cowboys who envisioned improving the lifestyles of bull riders. Though he made a bundle of money solely from being a PBR founding investor, Sharp said he’s elated about today’s stars making big bucks in the arena.
“I remember when I won the world (in the PRCA in 1990), I won $126,000,” Sharp said. “Today, cowboys win that much at only two or three bull ridings.”
Sharp is referring to the PBR’s Built Ford Tough Series, that often pays the winner of a regular-season show $30,000, $40,000 and $50,000.
And there are those occasions when a cowboy pockets more than $100,000 in a weekend. After winning the PBR’s Tuff Hedeman Championship Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, eight years ago, Sharp finished the weekend with $120,720.
The main reason his earnings were inflated was because he pocketed $85,000 for staying on the bounty bull Dillinger, a two-time PBR World Champion owned by Herrington Cattle Co. (The two turned in a stunning score of 95.5.) Sharp also received $10,000 for cashing in on the Ford Truck Moment of Truth Bonus, meaning he led the event-title race going into the final round and then won the event. The other $25,720 came from the event’s purse.
“When I won that money at Fort Worth, I’d never won that much money in my life in three days,” Sharp said.
That was in 2002. A year later, the PBR began awarding a $1 million bonus to its World Champion.
Over the past seven seasons, the biggest beneficiary of the seven-figure Champion’s check has been Justin McBride, who won gold buckles in 2005 and 2007. During the latter part of the 2008 season, McBride became the first competitor in any bull riding or rodeo association to surpass $5 million in career earnings.
When McBride retired at the conclusion of the 2008 PBR World Finals in Las Vegas, his career earnings were more than $5.1 million over 10 years. By comparison, the all-time leading money winner in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association is seven-time World All-Around Champion Trevor Brazile, who has earned about $3.5 million in tie-down and team roping over 15 years.
McBride’s success has made a big impression on Ty Murray, a seven-time World All-Around Champion himself, and a PBR founder.
“To me, what’s nicer than the PBR founders and investors doing so well is seeing today’s cowboys who win big do well financially,” Murray said. “It’s great to see guys like Jim Sharp and Jerome Davis in great financial shape today, but what’s really great is to see guys like Justin McBride come on the scene and win big for 10 years, and now he’s living on the ranch of his dreams and is in great financial shape.”
Murray, 40, who lives with his music star wife Jewel near Stephenville, said bull riding is a dangerous sport, and its top athletes should be well paid.
“We want to see bull riders have a life where the reward comes closer to equaling the risk,” said Murray who works in a key advisory role for the PBR. “We’re talking about the world’s most dangerous sport that entertains a lot of people, and the guys should get paid.
“You can take away the fact that we were all bull riders and it was our dream to see bull riders earn more money and get more recognition and compete on more of a world stage,” Murray said. “If you take all of that out of it, athletes deserve what they are able to generate. In the PBR, we’re starting to make it where it generates more and more, and a lot of that is due to the athletes, so we keep trying to funnel the money to them.”
The PBR pays out about $10 million annually to competitors. This summer, the PBR will reach $100 million in prize money paid out to riders since its inception in 1992.
Last year, PBR World Champion Kody Lostroh earned $1,628,442. That’s more than seven times the earnings of 2009 PRCA bull riding champion J.W. Harris, who finished the year with $219,275.
In Murray’s heyday on the pro rodeo circuits in the late 1980s and 1990s, top cowboys traveled to more than 100 rodeos a year. Today, the top PBR riders conceivably can limit themselves to around 30 shows on the Built Ford Tough Series and still earn a great living.
“You look at guys like Guilherme Marchi, Justin McBride and Chris Shivers, these are guys who have never had to beat it up and down the road to 150 rodeos a year,” Murray said. “They’ve never had to give up a lot of the money they’ve won to expenses. Those guys were able to come in and have a great bull riding career without paying entry fees, but rather getting paid to come to the event. They’re able to have a great career and they can have something to show for it.”
One PBR founder who thrived in the same era as Murray and Sharp was Cody Custer, who won the PRCA world bull riding title in 1992. The same year, Custer was among the 20 bull riders who invested $1,000 to start up the PBR.
After selling a portion of his PBR stock three years ago, Custer is retired. Today, he and his wife Stacey live near Elk City, Okla., and spend a major portion of their time raising three children.
Custer, 44, lives near the Western Oklahoma and Eastern Texas Panhandle borders, and spends a lot of time hauling his two sons, Aaron and Brett, to youth rodeos throughout the Texas Panhandle. Aaron Custer, 17, competes in roping events, and Brett Custer, 12, is a bull rider.
As he hauls his sons to rodeos, Custer has become a key advisor for bull riding within the Texas Junior High Rodeo Association. He said he enjoys helping young cowboys.
“It’s about helping those boys with the passion for their lives, which is bull riding,” he said. “In the midst of that, I build relationships with them so I can speak into their lives and give them direction.”
A devout Christian, Custer also speaks at cowboy church services on the bull riding and rodeo circuits.
“I’m just a guy who has some open doors and some opportunities and credentials to speak into the lives of these kids because of the blessing that the Father gave me through my bull riding career,” he said.
North Carolina’s Jerome Davis, who won the PRCA world bull riding title in 1995, is another PBR founder. And reaping the financial rewards has been a tremendous blessing to Davis, who faced challenging medical costs after becoming paralyzed from the chest down in a 1998 bull riding accident in Texas.
“There’s still a lot of upkeep to keep me going every day,” Davis said. “It takes a lot of money to make that happen. For example, I go to physical therapy every Monday and Wednesday. It takes $300 a session to go to that deal, and insurance doesn’t pay for any of that. So, that (PBR) money comes in really handy.”
Davis, 37, and his wife Tiffany closely work together in the bull riding business at their home in Archdale, N.C. The couple lives in house that’s been in Jerome’s family for the past 110 years. Their days are filled with raising bucking bulls, conducting bull riding schools, helping produce PBR Touring Pro and Ford Series shows, producing junior rodeos and holding weekly Cowboy Church services.
Though he has prospered from being a ground-floor investor in the PBR, Davis said his lifestyle hasn’t changed to speak of.
“I’m still living the same way I lived before, pretty much,” Davis said. “I haven’t changed a whole lot. I’m doing the same old stuff. You know, my wife gets onto me because I’m still living in my grandpa’s old farm house. But that’s just the way I am.”
— by Brett Hoffman
