Press Releases

Florida Freedom Returning to Amerant Bank Arena in 2026

Published

10 months ago

November 21, 2025

South Florida Insider

Florida Freedom Return to Amerant Bank Arena Aug. 7-9 for 2026 PBR Teams League Homestand.

Tickets for Florida Freedom Days on sale Tuesday, Nov. 18th.

November 17th, 2025

The Florida Freedom, 2025 PBR Teams Regular Season Champions, today announced the return of Florida Freedom Days, presented by Breedlove Wound Care, taking over Amerant Bank Arena Aug. 7-9, 2026, for their annual homestand featuring three days of professional bull riding in South Florida. Freedom Days will mark the third event of the 2026 Teams season.

Tickets go on sale Tuesday, Nov. 18, at 10 a.m. ET and can be purchased at SeatGeek.com and PBR.com, at the Amerant Bank Arena Box Office, or by phone at 1-800-732-1727.

The bull-riding action for Freedom Days at Amerant Bank Arena begins at 7:45 p.m. ET on Friday, Aug. 7; 6:45 p.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 8; and 1:45 p.m. ET on Sunday, Aug. 9.

The Freedom are Florida’s only professional bull riding team, competing in a growing sports league that transforms bull riding from an individual sport into a team-formatted competition. The 10-team league features the world’s top bull riders competing on teams in five-on-five games throughout the season, culminating in the PBR Teams Championship in Las Vegas. The Freedom were one of eight founding teams and relocated to South Florida prior to the 2024 season when the league expanded to 10 teams.

Led by Head Coach and 10-time PBR World Finals qualifier and Ring of Honor inductee Paulo Crimber, the Freedom delivered a dominant 2025 campaign, finishing the 2025 PBR Teams regular season ranked No. 1 with a 25-9 record to clinch the regular-season championship.

“This team never quits,” Crimber said. “Finishing No. 1 in the regular season takes a lot of hard work, discipline and belief in each other. Vegas didn’t go our way, but our guys showed the heart and character that define this organization. We’ll learn from it and come back stronger next season, and we can’t wait to do it in front of our fans when Freedom Days returns to Amerant Bank Arena for our 2026 homestand.”

The Freedom’s roster is built around a compelling father–son storyline and two of the league’s brightest stars. Head Coach Paulo Crimber’s 20-year-old son, John Crimber, wrapped the year 25-for-34, capturing his second consecutive PBR Teams Live Legendary MVP title in 2025 and becoming the youngest rider in PBR history to surpass $1 million in career earnings. Thiago Salgado, another breakout performer of the season, finished third in the MVP race. The duo anchors a lineup rich with international firepower, including seasoned Brazilian standouts João Ricardo Vieira, Alex Cerqueira, João Lucas Campos, Elizmar Souza Jeremias and Yan Victor Santos Cunha.

Despite entering the 2025 PBR Teams Championship in Las Vegas as the No. 1 seed, the Freedom’s postseason run ended on a night of dramatic upsets across the bracket, with the top three seeds losing their openers. Florida pushed through a tough quarterfinal draw but ultimately fell to the Missouri Thunder and was later edged out in the Last Chance Game, narrowly missing a semifinal berth. The Freedom still delivered several standout moments in Las Vegas, including Crimber’s electric 92-point ride aboard two-time World Champion Man Hater, one of the top scores of the weekend. He also extended his streak to 10 straight qualified rides, tying the record set by Texas Rattler Daniel Keeping in 2024.

Overall, league event attendance continued to increase in the 2025 season. On television, the bull riding games reached 3.0 million viewers when airing on CBS and CW on the same weekend, totaling 28.2 million fans reached in the 2025 season. Even with a ranker pen of bulls, the on-the-dirt product has never been better, demonstrated in riding percentages at 42.13 percent for the 2025 season, up by almost a full 2 percent and another Championship decided in the final outs of the Championship game.

For more information on the Florida Freedom, visit pbr.com/teams/florida-freedom or follow the Florida Freedom on Facebook, Instagram and X.

About the Florida Freedom:

The Florida Freedom is South Florida’s professional bull riding team in the PBR Teams league, based at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, alongside NHL tenant the Florida Panthers. After competing in Oklahoma during the league’s first two seasons, the Freedom relocated to Florida and will return in 2026 with their annual Freedom Days homestand, set for Aug. 7-9. The Freedom are led by Head Coach Paulo Crimber, a 10-time PBR World Finals qualifier and Ring of Honor inductee, alongside Owner and General Manager Heath Freeman.

About PBR Teams:

PBR Teams is an elite league featuring the world’s top bull riders competing on teams in five-on-five games leading to a Team Championship at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. During the 2026 season, the league’s fifth, each of the 10 teams – Austin Gamblers of Austin, TX; Arizona Ridge Riders of Glendale, AZ; Carolina Cowboys of Greensboro, NC; Florida Freedom of Sunrise, FL; Kansas City Outlaws of Kansas City, MO; Nashville Stampede of Nashville, TN; New York Mavericks of Brooklyn, NY; OK; Oklahoma Wildcatters of Oklahoma City, OK; Missouri Thunder of Springfield, MO; and Texas Rattlers of Fort Worth, TX– will host a homestand. Neutral-site games in Anaheim, CA and Colorado Springs, CO are planned as well.

PBR Teams, launched in July 2022, builds on the existing structure of professional bull riding with the same basic rules for judging and scoring qualified 8-second bull rides. In events staged in a tournament-style format, all teams compete in head-to-head matchups against a different opponent each day. Each game features five riders per team squaring off against another team. Full team rosters are comprised of seven riders on the Protected Roster and five Reserve riders. The team with the highest aggregate score of qualified rides among its riders is declared the winner of each game.

PBR is part of TKO, 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.