Black urban rodeo returns to Philly at Temple’s Liacouras Center

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For the first time in decades, the rodeo is back in town.

Two million pounds of dirt have been spread out inside Temple University’s Liacouras Center basketball arena to prepare for 8 Seconds Rodeo on Saturday night and the three B’s: bull riding, barrel racing and bareback bronco riding.

“We drag it so that it’s nice and soft for the horses and for the athletes to fall in when they get buckled off,” said Ivan McClellan, founder of 8 Seconds. “The dirt is an enormously complex piece of this event.”

The Bill Pickett Rodeo, a prominent touring Black rodeo event, last came to Philly in 1994. McClellan says there is a reason urban cities rarely see rodeos: it’s really hard to do.

“We’re bringing 50 dump trucks down Broad Street full of dirt. We’ve got bulls loading into this tiny basketball arena,” he said. “We’re going to have over 24 horses loaded into this building. Doing that in the middle of the city is a logistics nightmare.”

Darrin Ferrel, vice president of Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club, takes the kids in his program to Maryland to see rodeos. He said the fact that one is coming to North Philly means a lot.

“I got really happy when I heard that it was coming, and a lot of the kids were, like, ‘Rodeo coming? Where? On Broad Street? What?,’” he said. “It’s going to be, like, history.”

8 Seconds Rodeo started in 2023 in Portland, Oregon, not long after McClellan, a photographer, discovered Black cowboys and started posting to Instagram. He wondered why few people were promoting them.

“They were doing the Cupid shuffle in their boots, and riding around barrels with acrylic nails,” he said. “There were young men riding horses with basketball shorts and Jordans on. Things that I was familiar with in Black culture but mixed with Western culture, which I always thought was just something that white folks did.”

After growing rodeo events in Portland and seeing Black riders “come out of the woodwork,” McClellan relocated the business to Chester County, Pennsylvania.

“We moved out here about a year ago and we decided, ‘Hey, let’s do a rodeo in Philly,’” he said. “It’s the grittiest, most soulful place on earth. Let’s make it happen out there. This is our first East Coast event.”

McClellan calls his events “show-deos” for their entertainment production. In addition to riding events with concert-level lights and sound, music will spin all night by local DJ Diamond Kuts, a step team will perform on the dirt, and a choir will perform “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

Riders will compete for $60,000 in prize money across three events, making 8 Seconds one of the more lucrative rodeos of its size. McClellan has seen how Black cowboys struggle to make a living, even those who win competitions.

“Anybody that wants to succeed in this industry, I feel like it’s my purpose to make it easier for them,” he said. “Infuse them with capital and put a little bit of wind in their sails.”

8 Seconds Rodeo is expected to sell out. McClellan said on Thursday the 7,000-seat arena was 70% sold. He will likely bring it back next year, with plans to expand to other cities.