They spend all year zigzagging across 18 states, ridin’ and ropin’ from Walla Walla, Wash., to Deadwood, S.D., down to Austin, Texas, and out to Santa Maria, Calif. And they do so with one final destination in mind: Las Vegas, where the year’s top cowboys and cowgirls gather during the first week of December for the annual Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.
Also known as the “Super Bowl of Rodeo,” the prestigious event has called Las Vegas home since 1985, welcoming not only the year’s top rodeo competitors for an action-packed season-ending showdown, but also turning the Entertainment Capital of the World into cowboy country for 10 electrifying days and nights.
While this massive celebration of the Western lifestyle stretches from one end of the Las Vegas Strip to the other (and way beyond), the main attraction for those first two weeks in December has always been the nightly competition inside a sold-out Thomas & Mack Center.
Fast-paced and thrilling, each of the NFR’s 10 “go-rounds” features professional rodeo’s top 15 regular-season money-earners competing it out in seven standard events: bareback riding, steer wrestling, team roping, saddle bronc riding, tie-down roping, barrel racing and bull riding. With results varying from one night to the next, each go-round is essentially a riveting chapter in a 10-day-long suspense novel.
That edge-of-the-seat drama has resulted in an astounding streak of 330 consecutive sellouts that dates to 1987—that’s 17,000 fans per night, 170,000 fans per year, for 33 straight years (including 2019). The good news? As much as attending the NFR is a bucket list-type thrill, fans don’t need a ticket to enjoy the “Super Bowl of Rodeo.” All they have to do is slip on their boots, grab their Stetson and join fellow rodeo enthusiasts at one of the dozens of nightly NFR viewing parties hosted by resorts on and around the Strip.
Thomas & Mack Center, 6:45 p.m. Dec. 5-14, starting at $73 plus tax and fee. 702.739.3267
