Space Cowboys at Air Force: How PBR Leveraged Digital Marketing to Sell Out a Stadium Show in Eight Weeks

When Professional Bull Riders (PBR) booked its first-ever event at Air Force Academy's Falcon Stadium, the stakes were higher than usual. While PBR had hosted several successful stadium shows, the lion's share of PBR stops run in 13,000- to 14,000-seat arenas. Falcon Stadium holds more than double that. PBR was also bringing in Tim McGraw to headline a post-bull-riding concert. A new venue, a bigger building to fill, and a marquee name on the marquee meant PBR needed to add to its full marketing and PR program a digital campaign built for scale, not routine.

Pulling that off took more than the usual playbook. PAC Marketing has spent five years as PBR's agency of record, running close to 100 PBR markets a year across its various tours — enough to know exactly what makes a fan buy. Add in that Air Force Academy is a Paciolan-powered venue, and PAC Marketing already knew the Colorado Springs and Denver market, Air Force's brand pull there, and who to call to get things approved fast. Concert-selling experience, PBR-specific audience knowledge, and a head start on the local market all landed on the same campaign.

The goal: sell out a stadium PBR had never played, on a market it had never tested, with a $60,000 media budget — roughly double what PBR typically spends on a market-level campaign.

Building a plan for a market PBR had never tested

Selling out a stadium show is a different game than selling a single ticket, and PAC Marketing built this campaign like a tentpole concert with strategic phases designed to maximize awareness, engagement, and revenue.

The campaign opened with an announcement stage: paid ads across Denver and Colorado Springs introducing PBR at Air Force and confirming McGraw as the headliner, built purely to generate buzz before tickets went on sale. About a week later, the campaign moved into pre-sale and then on-sale, with spend calibrated against real-time sales velocity — pulling budget toward whatever channel was converting fastest, holding some in reserve for the maintenance phase, and layering in a Memorial Day promotional push timed to a seasonal spike in buying intent. Each phase carried its own budget target, its own creative, and its own read on how fast the stadium was filling.

Two weeks out, with sales trending toward a sellout, PAC Marketing shifted spend again — away from ticket messaging and toward awareness for the free pre-show Fan Fest, giving fans a reason to show up early even after tickets were gone.

The result: a sellout crowd of 30,963 fans, achieved in just eight weeks on a $60,000 media budget - proof that a first-time market doesn't need a bigger spend, just the right playbook. Search led all seven marketing channels in performance, followed by Meta, PMAX, and YouTube.

The tactic that made the difference: borrowing the venue's own voice

Because this was PBR's first event at Air Force Academy, PAC Marketing recommended a new approach for this market: dark posts running not just from PBR's own accounts, but from Air Force's page and Tim McGraw's own artist account as well.

The logic was straightforward, and it worked two ways. Colorado Springs and Denver audiences already see Air Force running paid social ads year-round for football season tickets and mini plans — they recognize the brand and trust it. PBR, by contrast, was a name these fans had never seen advertised in their feeds before. Running ads from Air Force's own page meant fans encountered PBR's event through a source they already knew, rather than a new touring brand's cold outreach. Running dark posts from Tim McGraw's account did the same job for a different audience — reaching his existing fan base directly, through the artist they already followed, rather than asking them to discover the show through PBR's channels first.

It worked. During the on-sale period, ads run from Air Force's page outperformed ads run from PBR's own page, generating 3.4x the revenue.

The tactic came at no added cost to Air Force — PBR fully funded the ads, and Air Force's only lift was approving use of its page identity and any copy adjustments. It's now a repeatable playbook PAC Marketing recommends whenever a touring client plays a partner venue for the first time.

A partnership built on more than one event

This wasn't a one-off. PBR has now run four stadium-scale shows in Paciolan-powered venues over the past year — Colorado State (twice), Florida State, and now Air Force — and this is only the beginning of more. All campaign performance feeds into a shared dashboard that integrates data across every channel, giving PBR's team full visibility in real time, and the two teams meet regularly to trade ideas across Paciolan's broader college and concert-promoter client base.

Selling out Falcon Stadium at our first time there, on such a big event, tells you what this partnership can do, complementing our marketing and PR efforts. PAC Marketing treats every market like it's the biggest show of the year, and the numbers back that up. Tyler Hope, PBR, Vice President, Live Event Marketing – East

For a five-year partner that keeps raising the size of the ask — bigger stadiums, bigger headliners, bigger budgets — Space Cowboys is proof that the right venue, the right artist, and the right media strategy can turn a first-time show into a new standard.

Connect with your PAC Marketing representative today to achieve your sell-through goals. Don’t work with us? Let’s talk! Email: LBaumgartner@Paciolan.com.