DISCLAIMER: The schedule and format of the 2024 PBR World Finals have since been changed.
ARLINGTON, Texas – The PBR (Professional Bull Riders) today announced an evolved and expanded schedule for the organization’s crown jewel – the World Finals. Beginning in 2024, the PBR World Champion will be crowned in Arlington, Texas, at AT&T Stadium, capping four exhilarating rounds of action that will launch the season-culminating event the weekend prior at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth.
After an opening weekend of competition in Fort Worth at Dickies Arena from May 10-13, 2024, featuring Rounds 1-4, the 2024 PBR World Finals: Unleash The Beast will conclude inside the home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys on May 18-19, 2024, with Rounds 5 and 6 and the Championship Round.
Tickets for the 2024 PBR World Finals are on sale now and can be purchased at PBR.com/WF24.
The World Finals action will also continue to be accompanied by an action-packed lineup of programming in the iconic Stockyards, making Fort Worth and Arlington crucial fan destinations in May for all things PBR.
“AT&T Stadium is the home of the Cowboys, and it is fitting to be the destination for Western sports enthusiasts around the globe to take in the climax of bull riding’s crown jewel, the PBR World Finals,” PBR CEO and Commissioner Sean Gleason said. “We’ve hosted incredibly successful events at AT&T Stadium for more than a decade and bookending the World Finals' start at Dickies Arena with the grand finale at this extraordinary state-of-the-art venue will put a giant exclamation point on the World Finals while adding to our already diverse and burgeoning schedule in the heart of Cowboy Country in Fort Worth. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, we recognize numerous historic and record-setting PBR moments have happened in both Fort Worth and Arlington. Going forward in future seasons, we will ramp up the excitement with new and even more exciting and diverse fan experiences, including an even larger presence in the Fort Worth Stockyards to further connect with the very audience who have helped make us who we are today.”
“Hosting PBR at AT&T Stadium has become one of our longest-running events since we opened the stadium in 2009 and they hosted their first event here in 2010,” said Dallas Cowboys Chief Operating Officer Stephen Jones. “Since then, the fans of North Texas have grown accustomed to attending this great event at AT&T Stadium, and we’re extremely honored to continue this incredible tradition and relationship with PBR by hosting the World Finals in 2024.”
“We’re thrilled about PBR’s decision to bring the action-packed World Finals back to AT&T Stadium here in The American Dream City,” Arlington Mayor Jim Ross said. “We’re ready to welcome fans next year to our world-class Entertainment District to cheer on the top bull riders as they chase their dreams on the international stage.”
The migration comes as PBR, alongside its partners in Fort Worth and Dickies Arena, in addition to Arlington and Cowboys Stadium, unite to jointly continue championing the growth of the World Finals.
Since relocating to Fort Worth in 2022 and shifting to May with the launch of the PBR Team Series league, the World Finals have blossomed to be a near two-week festival of Western lifestyle programming across Cowtown and the iconic Stockyards.
PBR World Finals Week now and will continue to host a diverse array of programming in the Fort Worth Stockyards with a variety of concert series and fan zones accompanied by a slew of competitive events including the landmark Women’s Rodeo World Championship Week, Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, Ultimate Freestyle Bullfighting, and more.
By expanding PBR World Finals Week’s footprint to include AT&T Stadium the evolution of the marathon event will also bring to fans a reimagined experience, capitalizing on the state-of-the-art facilities available at AT&T Stadium to offer enhanced hospitality and entertainment programming.
PBR has competed inside AT&T Stadium, nearly annually for more than a decade. The ninth consecutive Iron Cowboy Major in Arlington in February 2018 set the sport’s largest single-day event attendance record, welcoming more than 46,000 fans.
The stadium also held three editions of the PBR Global Cup USA in 2019, 2020, and most recently 2022, when the organization made modern sports history, fielding a team exclusively of Native American riders to contend for the title of “Toughest Nation on Dirt.”
AT&T Stadium has also previously hosted the PBR World Finals, becoming the first venue outside of Las Vegas to welcome the marathon event when it relocated to the Lone Star State in 2020 due to ongoing restrictions associated with the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.
The 2020 PBR World Finals bore witness to several historic performances, including Jose Vitor Leme (Ribas do Rio Pardo, Brazil) earning his first of two PBR World Championships, now 2021 World Champion Bull Woopaa (Barker Bulls/Hookin’ W Ranch) being crowned the ABBI Classic Champion, and Texas’ own Boudreaux Campbell (Crockett, Texas) winning the World Finals and Rookie of the Year honor, becoming just the fifth rider in history to earn both titles in the same season.
The event also marked the first time Leme and Woopaa went head-to-head, a rivalry that would twice shatter the PBR’s all-time, high-marked ride record during the 2021 campaign.
The announcement of the evolution of the championship weekend for the 2024 PBR World Finals comes as the 2023 iteration of the season-culminating event is still in progress.
Following the first three rounds of competition an injured, and not competing, top-ranked Kaique Pacheco (Itatiba, Brazil), remains 74 points ahead of No. 2 Leme, while Top 5 Dalton Kasel (Muleshoe, Texas) and Cooper Davis (Jasper, Texas) capped the first weekend of action with a score to inch closer to the No. 1 rank.
Tickets are still available for the 2023 PBR World Finals and can be purchased online at ticketmaster.com and PBR.com, or at the Dickies Arena Box Office. The Dickies Arena Box Office is open Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. CT and on event days.
The action continues Thursday, May 18, Friday, May 19, and Saturday, May 20 at 7:45 p.m. CT, concluding on Sunday, May 21 at 1:45 p.m. CT.
PBR RidePass on Pluto TV will offer re-airs and on-demand replays of every PBR Unleash The Beast and Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour event. PBR RidePass is available on desktops, laptops and mobile devices via www.pluto.tv. Click here for on-demand PBR programming.
Stay tuned to PBR.com for the latest news and results and be sure to follow the sport on all social media platforms at @PBR.