FORT WORTH, Texas – Outside the historic Cowtown Coliseum, women’s rodeo took its latest step forward.

On a blazing hot Monday afternoon in Fort Worth, Texas, dignitaries from the PBR and WCRA were on hand to introduce the competitors of the Women’s Rodeo World Championship, which is being held inside the Coliseum on May 16-18.

“Our goal and our mission, really at the ground floor, was to grow rodeo and raise the visibility and awareness of these tremendous women athletes we have in rodeo,” said WCRA president Bobby Mote. “Women in rodeo have been underserved, in our opinion, with seven disciplines in a standard rodeo, one of them only being barrel racing. Half of rodeo’s demographic is made up of women, and so it only made sense to us to help to create more opportunities for them. So we introduced breakaway roping. Jackie Crawford, she won our first WCRA championship in Chicago, won $15,000. First time a breakaway roper had ever done that.”

The world’s richest women’s rodeo has a guaranteed payout of $750,000, with bonuses of $5,000 for the winner of each discipline and $20,000 for the all-around winner.

“To date, after this weekend is done, the last three years, we’ll have given out $2.25 million to women in rodeo,” said PBR Commissioner and CEO Sean Gleason. “And let me tell you, that’s not a profitable business when you give out that much money in the early days of building a brand and building an opportunity. But we are fully committed to that. The way that we’re going to do that is by persevering. There’s a lot of people, frankly, in this industry that kind of hope we fail at this, but we’re not going to. If I could look back at the early days of the PBR, there were a lot of people that thought the PBR should fail, or wanted it to fail. But we have not done one thing to hurt or harm any other organizations out there. All we’ve done is add money and put it into the pockets of rodeo athletes. We’re really proud of that, and we’re fully committed to it.”

In Cowtown this week, 148 women are competing in barrel racing, breakaway roping and team roping. Each one was introduced on the steps of the iconic venue, receiving their back numbers and applause from the Fort Worth faithful.

“There’s mothers. There’s businesswomen. There’s athletes. There’s students,” said Women’s Rodeo World Championship Commissioner Linsay Rosser-Sumpter. “There’s an array of women that are here competing for everyone, and we are so excited.”

This is the third iteration of the event and the first held in Fort Worth. While this kind of opportunity for women’s rodeo athletes is new, women competing in rodeo is not.

“We’re moving in a direction of such amazing initiatives with innovation and inclusion, and the opportunity is appreciated, but we’ve been here. We’ve been in this sport,” Rosser-Sumpter said. “There’s a lot of women that didn’t have the opportunity to continue their careers after college, and we are just happy to have a platform with the Women’s Rodeo World Championship, and being in Fort Worth, and being part of the WCRA and the PBR.”

Indeed, the Western sports world is getting far more inclusive. Also in town is the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, which PBR partnered with in early 2021 to provide more opportunities to rodeo athletes of color.

“We also celebrated earlier this week our partnership with Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo,” Gleason said. “All of this is part of our way of being inclusive and giving back to all the athletes in all disciplines, across all socioeconomic backgrounds, and we want that to be an ongoing opportunity that puts more people in the sport of rodeo competing for more money.”

In addition to the bonuses being paid out at the Women’s Rodeo World Championship, the event is now also a part of the Triple Crown of Rodeo. The Triple Crown is an annual bonus that pays a $1 million award to any athlete or collection of athletes who win first place in any three consecutive WCRA Major Rodeos.

The last Major, Rodeo Corpus Christi, just wrapped up, and among the champions is legendary breakaway roper Jackie Crawford.

“If she wins this event, when we get to Days of ’47, in addition to all the money she’s going to get paid here, she’s got a chance to earn a $1 million bonus at that event by winning three events in a row,” Gleason said. “Again, it’s just our commitment to helping athletes in the sport of rodeo.”

The Women’s Rodeo World Championship also introduced the challenger division this year. The professionals will compete for a world title, but a separate category gives up-and-coming and novice competitors a chance to win their own world title.

“We still get the question, ‘Is the team roping equal money?’ or, ‘Is the breakaway roping equal money?’ It goes without saying with us,” Mote said. “We treat them all the same. We believe that creating an incentive for these ladies is one of the things that’s going to help to grow the sport. And so, once we launched the breakaway roping in the WCRA, it was evident to us that there were a lot more women out there of different skill levels that also wanted the chance to compete, and could, but their schedules were limited, whether it was because they were a mom, they had a business, they had other things that kept them from being able to be a full-time pro. And so, next step is the Women’s Rodeo World Championship. We’ll award a world championship in both the pro and the challengers.”

Admission is free at Cowtown Coliseum on Monday and Tuesday, and the final Triple Crown of Rodeo round will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. ET. The rest of the competition is live on RidePass on Pluto TV (Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET and 8:30 p.m. ET).

It’s a huge moment for women’s rodeo, and Rosser-Sumpter, herself a former competitor, is bullish on the future.

“You will be amazed at the amazing talent that they all have, and I am very thankful for everyone that is here,” she said. “I am very thankful to be in this position. I was born and raised in this industry, and the opportunity the WCRA and the PBR are giving with $750,000 of added money is huge, and it’s only going to get better from here.”