AVENUE SPORTS FUND INVESTS IN THE NEW YORK MAVERICKS OF THE PBR TEAMS LEAGUE

Fast-growing bull riding league expands to New York; will host inaugural homestand at Barclays Center on August 9-10

NEW YORK, Feb. 23, 2024  /PRNewswire/ -- The Avenue Sports Fund has acquired the sanctioning rights for the New York Mavericks, which will join PBR Teams, the Professional Bull Riders league that launched 2022 and features the world's top riders.

The New York Mavericks will join the PBR Teams league as it expands from eight to 10 teams competing in five-on-five bull riding games in the 12-event 2024 PBR Camping World Team Series season which begins this July. The inaugural homestand for the New York Mavericks is scheduled for August 9-10 at Barclays Center – the first time the Brooklyn arena will host a Bull Riding event in its nearly 12-year history.

"The Avenue Sports Fund's investment in the New York Mavericks represents an extraordinary opportunity to establish a professional sports team in a fast-growing, established league and bring it to the nation's largest media market," said Marc Lasry, Avenue Capital's Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder and the leader of the Avenue Sports Fund. "Barclays Center is a world-class venue, and our goal is to build a championship bull riding team in the heart of Brooklyn to represent the entire state of New York."  

Avenue Capital Group recently launched the Avenue Sports Fund with the aim of providing capital solutions to a wide variety of established teams and leagues across the globe, as well as investments in emerging sports to capitalize on areas of exponential growth. Avenue Sports will also look to invest in sports-related media and entertainment, real estate, and other adjacent businesses.

"PBR has set record after record in New York City for the past 17 years, and fans in the greater New York area deserve their own bull riding team," said Sean Gleason, CEO and Commissioner, PBR. "Marc Lasry and the Avenue Sports Fund team are a strong addition to the accomplished group of owners who have helped make PBR Teams one of the most successful professional sports league launches in the past 25 years."

The New York Mavericks' roster will begin to take shape when up to six riders are selected in the 2024 Expansion Draft, scheduled to be held in New York City in April. Additional riders will fill out the roster when the 2024 New Rider Draft takes place. Finally, unrestricted free agency will also provide the two new teams the opportunity to fill out their roster.  

The 2024 PBR Camping World Team Series' 12-event regular season begins on July 12 in Oklahoma City and culminates with a team playoff at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas October17-20. Each team will host a homestand in their respective city and there will also be two league-produced regular season events at neutral sites in Anaheim, CA and Duluth, GA. All PBR Team Series events are carried on CBS Television Network, Paramount+, CBS Sports Network or Pluto TV.

PBR Teams build on the existing structure of professional bull riding with the same basic rules for judging and scoring qualified 8-second bull rides. Events are structured in a tournament-style format with all teams competing in head-to-head matchups against a different opponent each day. In each game, five riders on a team square off against another team. Full team rosters are comprised of up to seven riders on the Protected Roster and up to five Reserve Roster members. The team with the highest aggregate score of qualified rides among its riders is declared the winner of each game, and each game day has a team winner as well.

About Avenue Capital Group
Avenue Capital Group is a global investment firm focused primarily on making opportunistic credit and other special situations investments across the United States, Europe and Asia. Avenue, founded in 1995 by Marc Lasry and Sonia Gardner, draws on the skills and experience of over 60 investment professionals, and more than 180 employees worldwide operating from its headquarters in New York and offices in Dublin, London, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Singapore, Sydney, Abu Dhabi and Silicon Valley. Avenue has assets under management of approximately $13 billion.

About PBR (Professional Bull Riders)
PBR is the world's premier bull riding organization. More than 800 bull riders compete in more than 200 events annually across the televised PBR Unleash The Beast tour (UTB), which features the top bull riders in the world; the PBR Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour (PWVT); the PBR Touring Pro Division (TPD); and the PBR's international circuits in Australia, Brazil, and Canada. In 2022, PBR launched the PBR Team Series—now ten teams of the world's best bull riders competing for a new championship—as well as the PBR Challenger Series with more than 60 annual events nationwide. The organization's digital assets include PBR RidePass on Pluto TV, which is home to Western sports. PBR is a subsidiary of Endeavor, a global sports and entertainment company. For more information, visit PBR.com, or follow on Facebook at Facebook.com/PBR, Twitter at Twitter.com/PBR, and YouTube at YouTube.com/PBR.

For more information, contact:

For Avenue Capital Group:      Todd Fogarty – [email protected] – 917-992-1170
For PBR:                                  Andrew Giangola – [email protected] – 646-871-2402

SOURCE Avenue Capital Group