By Alexander Bernhardt Bloom | alex@queensledger.com

 

The Professional Bull Riders’ Camping World Team Series arrived to Downtown Brooklyn this past weekend to great fanfare. If that sounds, to you, like an unexpected turn of events, you’re not alone.

PBR has organized bull-riding competitions worldwide for decades, and this is the third season of its Team Series, which pits franchised groups of riders representing cities around the United States against one another in arranged match-ups. The New York Mavericks were not among them until this, their inaugural season, and none of those match-ups occurred on soil in the five boroughs – until this past Friday night. 

The soil, 750 tons of it, was trucked in and laid down on the floor of Brooklyn’s own Barclays Center, which was transformed into a rodeo and cowboy spectacle over the weekend for the Mavericks’ first, two-night homestand.

After all of that literal and figurative build-up, the Mavericks and their fans appeared remarkably at home. The team of five riders appeared before large and enthusiastic crowds, and defeated their slated opponents by shutout on Friday and Saturday nights both, a reversal of their fortunes thus far this season. They had begun the weekend dead last in the Team Series standings. They came out of it 8th of ten. They’ll head to Nashville next in pursuit of some more unexpected turns of event.

What can be expected with certainty, in any case, is the bull riders’ return to Downtown Brooklyn. On their exit from the arena this weekend Barclays staff handed attendees a refrigerator magnet advertising the rodeo’s return, dates assigned, in 2025.