• The New York Times, Wednesday, December 12, 2007 11 AM

Some advertisers are betting that bull-riding -- long a rodeo staple now seen as an extreme sport -- could be the next big thing in sports sponsorship. Already, the sport's main association, the Professional Bull Riders, has 20 sponsors, including Ford, Wrangler, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Jack Daniel's, as it stages more than 100 contests a year, some of them televised on NBC and many more available on YouTube.

"Professional Bull Riders has a great story; it has live attendance growth," says David Abrutyn, a senior vice president at IMG Consulting, who matches advertisers with sports franchises. "The number of events and TV viewership have both been growing every year." The bull riding season generally runs January through November, so PBR is now lining up deals.

Being so new to TV, prices remain low. National packages, including ringside signs, tour sponsorships and media time, can cost as little as $1 million to $2 million, notes Sean Gleason, chief marketing officer of Professional Bull Riders, while local exposure can be had for $500,000 or even less. Notes Jason Maltby, president of Mindshare. "It might allow an advertiser in who might not buy big-ticket sports."

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