A couple posts back, I mentioned that my wife had gotten us into watching America’s Cup sailboat racing on TV.  At the time this was on a channel/network  named “Outdoor Life Network” which was mostly about fishing and hunting, neither of which we do.  But their handling of a sport that is very hard to translate to TV was amazing.  Somehow they had hooked into a computer program that could show, in real time, the two boats, their courses, the placement of the buoys that marked the turns, the wind direction and speed, and conjure up these fascinating vector displays showing who was actually ahead despite appearances.  It was amazing.  Now my wife was hooked because every morning in her hotel in New Zealand, she’d watch the boats head out for that day’s race, and was now extending the experience via TV back in Silicon Valley.  For me, however, my first introduction was the TV coverage.

The first thing I noticed was that sailboat racing at this level is something of a hit or miss affair.  If the wind was too weak, the race was called off.  Same thing if it was too strong.  As a result, at least half of the days we turned the TV on to watch the race, it was called off.  Now at our house, these races came on right around knock off working time… right in that transition period my wife thinks of as a glass of good wine and I think of as a vodka martini  (Belvedere straight up with a twist, please).  As a result, after the race failed to appear on the screen, we normally didn’t bother to change channels… it kind of ran on in the background… one of those big-screen high def things talking to itself with no one even nearby.  That’s really how we discovered bull riding.  When the boat races were called off, Outdoor Life Network ran bull riding instead.

The first thing that caught our attention were the wrecks.  That’s what they’re called — wrecks.  A typical wreck happens when a bull throws the rider into what would be the second story and he comes down on his head.  Sometimes the bull then rakes him over a bit after he’s on the ground.  Our mouths dropped open.  Now we ride and show horses, and as anyone around horses knows, they buck.  But not like this.  These bulls are 2,000 lbs of muscle and when they throw the rider he sails… I wasn’t kidding about the second story.  I’ve never seen bucking like this.  The riders turned out to be young… 18 and up… an old timer was anyone in their 30’s, and I don’t remember seeing anyone past 40.  Most of them had broken so many bones they had lost track.  But they got back on and kept riding, frequently wearing casts.  We sat down and had another drink… stronger.  Couldn’t believe our eyes.

The events came on weekly and after three or four we had begun recognizing the kids… and a couple weeks after that we knew all the bulls too.  The deal was to ride the bull for 8 seconds… and then get scored on how much style you showed.  The interesting part was the bull got scored too.  My favorite bull was a small one called BlueBerry Wine who could toss anyone… the announcers would say, “… here comes so and so who’s going to ride BlueBerry Wine,” and we’d shake our heads and say, “He’s NOT going to ride BlueBerry Wine.”  And they never did.  Total score for any ride was the combination of rider and bull’s scores.  At the end of the year, a champion rider was declared, and so was a champion bull!  I couldn’t get over the punishment these kids were taking… and then I found out why.  They were riding for a million dollars.  These were basically all farm kids, half of them from Mexico and Brazil, but at the end of the year the champion got a check for a million dollars… not to mention all the little 10 and 20 thousand dollar checks along the way.  This was serious money!

PBR, Profession Bull Riders, was started in 1992 when 20 of these “kids” each put up $1,000 to start a professional bull riding tour.  Their goal was to become the NASCAR of the rodeo circuit.  I’m not a fan of NASCAR — my wife and I are Formula One addicts — but you have to admire the way NASCAR turned a bunch of unorganized little stock car events into a gigantic business.  Rodeos are a bit like that… the stock car events I mean.  PBR set out to turn it into a serious business by focusing on the single event that was the biggest, hardest, highest-jumping, most thrilling part of the rodeo — the bull riding.  They created a tour of events and worked out a point system that ultimately determined a champion.  Today, it’s over 100 events on four different tours, that over 16 million people watch or attend (and that was back in 2004).  Advertisers came… Super-8 Hotels (8 second rides… get it?)… Ford… all sorts of companies lined up to endorse riders and advertise.  People began to breed bulls just for the PBR circuit just like thoroughbred horses. All the major cities began to hold PBR events, and last year PBR began holding them in Mexico and Brazil too.  One reality TV show was based on PBR with the participants learning to ride bulls with the finale being a ride in one of the real events.

PBR became so popular that it changed the network… the original hunting and fishing network, Outdoor Life, changed its name to VS (Versus) to pick up on the contest between man and animal.  Las Vegas now hosts the championship — the final event that settles the million dollar question — and if you don’t have your tickets for Mandalay Bay six months in advance, forget it.  Oh, and those 20 kids that put up $1,000 each… when PBR was sold to a large company, they each reportedly received $4.7 million.

Now this is serious marketing.  At each step, PBR understood how to make the attraction even bigger… how to turn a weekend rodeo into a gigantic business… how to attract advertisers and endorsements… and how to make the thing work on TV.  They did something I always advise service companies to do… turn their service into a product.  Give it a name (Blueberry Wine is already taken), and put a price on it.  Every company regardless of the product or service should have a price list.  Potential customers are always reassured when they see a list of “products” with prices on them — it implies you sold a few before.  The real test is can you do a datasheet on it?  Think about it… could you do a datasheet for a bullriding event.  I haven’t seen it but I can pretty much guarantee PBR has done it… and they send them to all the potential advertisers.  Find a way to turn your “thing” into a product and put a price on it… then you can treat the special versions by just having price adders for the various features and addons.  PBR did that by providing a product to their cvonsumers — the people that came to the events and watched them on TV.  That product constisted of a consistent scoring system backed up with knowledgeable and colorful commentators, lots of instant replays, a button the rider could push (and pay a $500 fee) to get the judges to look again if he thought they had hit the 8-second buzzer early, and lots of quick interviews after the big rides and background stories on each of the riders.  That’s a complete product.  They had a second product they delivered to the advertisers… millions and millions of fans who tended to buy Ford trucks among other things.  The point is, these people understood how to take the enterprise out and ride it hard, always moving up to the next step when the time was right. Never seen it?  Give it a try, it’s addictive.

That year at Christmas, my wife gave me a little stuffed copy of BlueBerry Wine (did I mention PBR has merchandise?) and he still stands proudly in the wine bar along with the bust of Voltaire… great conversation piece.  And after watching a couple of seasons of bull riding, my own skills on horseback got better… well more relaxed anyway.  I’ll never forget how the 2-time champion Chris Shivers, finding himself on a less-than incredible bull, started selling to the judges.  Whipping his white stetson off and swatting the bull on the butt with it and then waving it over his head to the crowd as the bull jumped for the sky, Chris sold the ride.  It was like something out of the movies.  Now in my case, taking horses into the show ring to warm them up frequently starts with the horse bucking under you… they’re a bit nervous and that’s how they show it… nothing personal against you but let’s buck some.  That’s not my favorite thing.  It’s way down my list from Italian food, for instance.  But honestly, if you don’t let it stress you out and you stay focused, you won’t get dumped and it only lasts a few seconds.  But horses can not buck like those bulls on PBR… not even close.  Hard to take it that seriously after watching the pros ride those bulls.  So when, in the practice ring at my last show, my horse began to rodeo buck, I just let him do it… let him buck across the arena and as he got to the stands, pulled him over to the side and put him into a nice trot.  And as my eyes met the spectators sitting in those stands right in front of me, I said, “wahoo”… as in… big deal.  Jeeeez, if I had only had a serious hat.  WAAHOOOOOOO.