City Of Fort Worth: Joint Venture Expands Programming At Cowtown Coliseum, Stockyards

Press release from City of Fort Worth:

June 04, 2021

As part of ongoing effort to introduce Western sports to new audiences, the world’s leading bull riding organization has returned to the historic Fort Worth Stockyards District, making the Cowtown Coliseum a new hub for Western lifestyle activities.

This week, on the steps of the iconic Cowtown Coliseum, PBR joined venue operator ASM Global and Fort Worth’s Stockyards Heritage Development Co. to announce a joint venture to operate the Cowtown Coliseum and to expand entertainment programming and marketing partnerships in the National Historic District.

Through this partnership, the three partners will manage and promote Cowtown Coliseum and portions of the surrounding historic district. PBR will produce dozens of Western sports events at Cowtown Coliseum annually, as well as concerts, live entertainment and other Western lifestyle content.

“Fort Worth is a city of great character with great characters,” Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price said. “This is the city of cowboy culture, and I can’t think of a better place for PBR to hang its hat than Fort Worth.”

A goal of the partnership is to make the Fort Worth Stockyards a global epicenter for the Western lifestyle, growing the visitor count from its current flow of 4.7 million visitors a year to 7 million visitors annually.

“Our founders’ first event was here in Fort Worth; it’s the epicenter of cowboy culture and cowboy history, part of PBR’s own history and heritage, and now a big part of our future,” said Sean Gleason, PBR commissioner and CEO.

Gleason said that while traditional PBR events will be a cornerstone of the new Stockyards relationship, “we’ll also experiment with different formats for an audience coming more for lifestyle experiences. Cowtown Coliseum gives us a great place to incubate and tweak those concepts.”

The Fort Worth Stockyards have already benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in recent years, including more than $200 million with Mule Alley and Hotel Drover over the past three years. The three-way partnership will add new entertainment experiences to supercharge the draw to visitors. 

“We look forward to expanding on our vision of elevating and enhancing the visitor experience while we pay careful attention to the history and legacy of the Stockyards,” said Craig Cavileer, managing partner for Stockyards Heritage Development Co. “We know that PBR and ASM share our core values and will make great partners for us and for the City of Fort Worth."

Photo: Mayor Betsy Price center, and District 2 Councilmember Carlos Flores, far right, joined PBR and ASM executives to launch the new joint venture outside Cowtown Coliseum.

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This press release was produced by City of Fort Worth. The views expressed here are the author’s own.