After the Texas Rattlers recently accepted the giant 20-pound sterling silver buckle for their 2023 bull riding team title, PBR boss Sean Gleason claimed PBR Teams is “the most successful launch of a new league in sports history.”
Gleason has a good case to make for the two-year-old bull-riding league. With bull riders shouting for teammates from the bucking chutes, walk-off game-winning rides, pumped-up home crowds, and a playoff format that’s turned into Cinderella’s ball, event attendance and television viewership exploded in the 2023 Teams season.
Today, things get even sunnier for the league with the announcement of the Florida Freedom.
The Freedom, which had been competing as the Oklahoma Freedom in Paycom Center in Oklahoma City for the league’s first two seasons, are set to host their first homestand in Amerant Bank Arena, home of the Florida Panthers NHL hockey club in Sunrise on August 2-4, 2024.
This relocation won’t be the end of bull riding in Oklahoma City, according to PBR. Future competitions are being planned.
“I couldn’t be more excited to bring to Florida a professional sports team,” said Heath Freeman, owner of the Florida Freedom. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the PBR’s exponential growth.”
It’s hard to ignore the new league’s strong momentum, completing the 2023 season averaging more than 1 million viewers per CBS broadcast, a 28% increase in viewership, according to Nielsen. Event attendance for the PBR Camping World Team Series in 2023 was up 24% over the inaugural season.
Off the dirt, the league was also buoyed by an acclaimed docuseries, “The Ride,” streaming on Prime Video.
Gleason, PBR’s Commissioner and CEO, pointed out that over three decades PBR has held many successful events across the state of Florida, which played a large part in the sport’s trailblazing role during the COVID-19 pandemic. When all other professional sports were idle, PBR was the first to return to competition by writing new safety protocols for live events. To start the 2021 season under the new health guidelines, events were held in Ocala, Arcadia, and Okeechobee.
Now, the sport that has crowned eight Brazilian-born champions will be courting Portuguese-speaking transplants calling South Florida their home with a local team they can pull for.
“We are an international sport, and South Florida is an area of great diversity,” Gleason said. “Under Heath Freeman’s leadership, the Florida Freedom is primed to build a passionate and diverse fan base rooting for their team competing in an exciting, growing sports league.”
While late-night comedians like to joke about Florida’s early-bird special retirees, the Freedom’s contingent of bull riders is one of the youngest in the league.
In 2023, the team finished the 2023 season No. 4 with a 14-14 record, led by Caden Bunch’s breakout season. The 20-year-old member of Cherokee Nation, who as a freshman in Oklahoma was high school state and National Champion in bull riding, successfully made the 8-second mark on 9 of his 14 bulls for the Freedom.
A year older than Bunch is Casey Roberts, an Alabama native and college national finals champion.
Another rider to keep an eye is Brazilian Elizmar Jeremias, a beanpole at 6’1” 140 pounds, who went 7-for-18 in his rookie season stateside, including beating the Arizona Ridge Riders on a re-ride on opening night of the 2023 season in Cheyenne.
In late October, the Freedom began the progressive elimination Championship tournament in Las Vegas ranked No. 4, and Bunch stepped up once again, walking off the win to beat the league’s reigning Champion Nashville Stampede in Round 1.
In Round 2, the Freedom fell to the eventual 2023 champion Texas Rattlers before being eliminated in the second Last Chance Game by the Missouri Thunder.
Relocating to their new home, the Florida Freedom will be looking to go even deeper into the 2024 playoffs and have their name emblazoned on the world’s largest sterling silver buckle.
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