Chad Blankenship describes his Professional Bull Riders team’s Rattler Days as “a distinctly hometown event.”
The happening includes the Ariat Texas Rattlers franchise staging their 2026 home games across the Fri-Sun, Oct 2-4, weekend along with fan-festival-style elements.
The Rattlers this week unveiled city jerseys, which serve as the Rattlers’ walkout jersey during team introductions during Rattler Days. They’re designed to celebrate their hometown: Fort Worth. The 2026 version ties into military heritage. Previous versions referenced Western heritage and the Panther City nickname.
As any city-based professional sports franchise looks to become an established part of its community, they need to develop the passionate fans who purchase tickets, watch match broadcasts, and buy the latest jerseys. Home games are the fulcrum around which team success revolves, and in the PBR Team Series, each franchise hosts only one set of them.
“Each of the 10 teams in the league hosts a home event, so we have one homestand,” explained Blankenship, the team’s president and general manager. “It’s a three-day event: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Every day there are five games, and all 10 teams compete each day.”
Each PBR Team Series game includes five competitors per squad. A rider from one team rides, followed by one from the opposing side, alternating until all 10 have gone. Qualified rides of eight seconds are scored by judges, and the team with the highest cumulative score wins. Now in its fifth season, this form of competition has brought a collaborative element to a historically individualized sport.
“The team series has introduced these dynamics that I think are quite similar to a lot of other team sports,” Blankenship said.
For his team to succeed, Blankenship will need Fort Worth area citizens to buy into those dynamics and turn into a true fanbase. That’s proven a challenge for previous Cowtown-based pro teams.
Courtesy Ariat Texas Rattlers
“We get it a lot,” said Fort Worth Sports Commission Executive Director Drew Hays. “You’re the largest city in the country without a professional sports franchise.”
The Rattlers, however, have some factors in their favor that previous ice hockey, basketball, lacrosse, and other former Fort Worth pro teams did not have. For one thing, their sport has spent more than 100 years stomping its way into the city’s identity.
“We know what our brand is, and it’s the Western heritage,” Hays said. “To have a professional organization like the Texas Rattlers that just cohesively fits our brand helps us tell that story.”
Cowtowners who grew up going to the Stock Show and Rodeo and who are steeped in the agriculture industries or the Stockyards ethos can easily relate to the sport they’d see at Rattler Days. But another advantage this franchise has is that the story Hays wants to tell resonates with ticket buyers beyond just North Texas.
“Fort Worth is a drive market from Austin and Oklahoma City for fans of those teams to get into town,” Hays said. “It’s a three-day event, so if you’re looking to come in, you can spend the weekend here.”
Other than a single pre-Stars Central Hockey League season when Dallas Freeze fans drove down I-30 to swell Fort Worth Fire crowds at the convention center, Fort Worth franchises haven’t historically been able to tap into appreciable revenues from visiting supporters. In their final season, Panther City Lacrosse’s closest opponent, the Colorado Mammoth, was based more than 700 miles to the Northwest. Rivalries can make a difference both in terms of rallying one’s own fans and attracting those of the opposition.
The ability to draw fans of the other PBR teams and of the sport itself has advantages for creating goodwill in the city, too. Merchants like it when an event brings in patrons who do business with them during their visits. The fan festival offers visitors more chances to patronize local businesses over the weekend. It also represents a chance for the team to strengthen bonds with fans.
“We have mascots. We run a FFA charity pancake breakfast. We have a parade. We do autograph signings,” Blankenship said. “The fan fest helps make our team and our athletes accessible.”
Hays added, “There might be a personal level to going down to an autograph session or whatever it may be to meet some of these athletes, where if you’re watching from the stands, you might not get that personal connection.”
Blankenship noted that the team activates in the community throughout the year as well, including through FFA and 4-H programs and the sports commission’s elementary-age reading program. Much of the roster lives in the area, which is also an asset.
The PBR Teams’ riders also rank among the best in the world in their sport. That matters, too, because a perception that a team is “minor league” hurts in a media market saturated by NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, WNBA, and MLS teams with their big-league pedigrees.
The Rattlers’ athletes compete in a modern, well-equipped venue, Dickies Arena. That’s an advantage most of their pro sports forerunners in Cowtown did not have. The Rattlers also just opened a purpose-built training facility in Decatur with an eye to developing another element vital to creating fan loyalty: winning games. So far, they’ve done pretty well with that aspect of the equation.
“Fans like winners,” said Blankenship, whose franchise won the 2023 championship. “We all like to be associated with winners, and so it helps that we win a lot of our games.”
In the first four seasons, he continued, the Rattlers won 11 of 12 home games, 11 of them at Dickies and one at Cowtown Coliseum in the Stockyards. “That is the strongest home dirt record by a margin across the league.”
If those wins can come in dramatic fashion, so much the better.
“It sometimes comes down to the last rider on, if they’re going to win the competition that night,” Hays said. “It’s high energy.”
The Rattlers will look to create as much energy as they can Oct 2-4 with eye to putting themselves in position to register qualified rides into the future in Cowtown.
Rattler Days presented by Germania Insurance
Tailgate party 3-7pm Thu, Oct 1, in the Stockyards followed by the weekly PBR Stockyards Showcase individual (not the teams) bull-riding competition at the Cowtown Coliseum. • Tailgate party 3-7pm Fri, Oct 2, followed by PBR Teams games in Dickies Arena beginning at 7:45 p.m. The Rattlers take on Oklahoma City on Hispanic Heritage Night. • Tailgate party 10am-7pm Sat, Oct 3, with an 11:30am parade in the Stockyards with
Rattlers riders and team mascots, then the riders sign autographs at noon. Competition in Dickies Arena starts at 6:45pm, with the Rattlers facing the Austin Gamblers on Defend the Fort Night. • Sunday is all about bull riding, starting at Dickies Arena at 1:45pm. The Rattlers take on the Arizona Ridge Riders.
