PBR Finals could strengthen Fort Worth’s weak relationship with pro sports | Opinion
Little Fort Worth, Texas, is the 12th largest city in the United States, and No. 1 in terms of largest U.S. cities without a major pro sports franchise.
Its past relationship with sports has ranged from awful to pretty good, but its current leadership is disregarding that history and using sports as a point of attraction.
On Tuesday at Dickies Arena, the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) announced that its world finals is relocating from Las Vegas to Fort Worth permanently, starting in May of 2022.
The PRB World Finals is a seven-day event/festival that should flood Dickies Arena, the Stockyards and Will Rogers with other events.
The PBR signed a three-year contract that it fully expects to run much longer.
This is what the city quietly was hoping for when both the PBR and the National Finals Rodeo left Las Vegas last year for Fort Worth and Arlington for their respective championships. Both events came to AT&T Stadium because of COVID restrictions in Las Vegas.
There is some discussion that the NFR may return to the area in 2021, but that is mostly in the chatter phase.
Landing the PBR World Finals is a coup for the city, and former mayor Betsy Price and local business leader Ed Bass, whose vision was to build Dickies Arena to attract premiere events.
Fort Worth doesn’t need to attract any more residents. What it needs is to attract are businesses; too many are anchored east of Fort Worth.
For years city leaders have debated whether sports are worth it, and the current leadership of Fort Worth is trying to see if it can work here.
With the major sports leagues, which now includes Major League Soccer, in this country essentially tapped out in terms of the number of teams for the foreseeable future, Fort Worth will have to be creative in using sports.
Attracting a PBR World Finals is a part of what will be a long process.
“What Fort Worth has really needed to do is chart its own path,” Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker said Tuesday. “A new soccer complex, what would that mean for our city to attract a soccer team of some type? It would be stupid not to want that. Fort Worth deserves to be a part of that equation.”
She also mentioned the Major League Lacrosse team that will play in Fort Worth starting this December.
To the average American sports consumer, a soccer club that isn’t MLS, or a major league lacrosse team, will register as minor leagues.
They are, but it’s also a start.
“If we don’t continue to sharpen our edge and compete with other large cities in the United States in the sports arena, then we’d be in trouble,” Parker said. “But I think with Dickies Arena we are starting to chart our own course.
“When it comes to traditional sports teams that you hear about, we are exploring those things. Do I think it’s going to be a competition in football or basketball? No, I don’t. There are other areas we can compete in.”
The major league sports for Fort Worth will be events, such as the NASCAR races, the PBR World Finals or the first two rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Tuesday’s announcement was months in the making, and started not long after the PBR elected to have its championships in Arlington last year.
It started with a call to Gov. Greg Abbott’s office. His office inquired if PBR president and CEO Sean Gleason would like to have a “longer term conversation.”
Gleason narrowly missed out on the PBR being a part of the state’s Major Event Reimbursement program in 2020, but he said Fort Worth and Tarrant County leaders were able to help tap into the state’s event tourism fund.
“That basically got us to a point where we could say, ‘Yes, let’s move it,’” Gleason said. “This is not a financial decision at all.”
Not sure I ever believe that, but he sounded convincing.
He said he did not give Las Vegas city leaders a chance to match Fort Worth’s offer.
“I was trying to get the finances to where I could afford to have the event in Fort Worth compared to what we had been receiving [in Las Vegas],” he said. “The move is about coming to Fort Worth and being in the epicenter of Cowboy culture.”
The lure of being The Event in Fort Worth trumped being an event in Las Vegas.
“This the right place, and market, for us,” Gleason said. “When we had the finals last year in Texas, as we got more and more invested in the city, it all felt right. It will be roughly 7,000 fewer seats [than Las Vegas] but we will add performances, and we will see where we will go from here.”
Same goes for Fort Worth.
