Half of every score belongs to the bull
How Bulls Are Scored
A qualified ride in professional bull riding is scored out of 100 points — up to 50 for the rider, up to 50 for the bull. The judges score the bull on every out, whether the rider makes the 8-second whistle or eats dirt in two: a bull's job is to buck, and he gets graded on it every single trip.
Judges reward the things that make a bull hard to ride and spectacular to watch: bucking power, kick, spin, direction changes, and overall degree of difficulty. The harder and wilder the trip, the higher the mark. Those bull scores are the raw material for everything on this site — career averages, season standings, and ultimately the championship average that decides the World Champion Bull.
Why 45 is the gold standard
Across the 90,867 scored outs in our database, the median bull score is 42.50. Scores climb from there like a cliff face:
| Bull score | Outs at or above | Share of all outs |
|---|---|---|
| 43+ | 35,539 | 39.1% |
| 44+ | 13,496 | 14.9% |
| 45+ | 3,486 | 3.8% |
| 46+ | 902 | 1.0% |
| 47+ | 198 | 0.2% |
| 48+ | 26 | 0.03% |
A 45-point out puts a bull in the top 3.8% of every trip ever recorded here — roughly one out in twenty-six. Averaging 45+ across a season is what world titles are made of. Scores past 47 are once-a-season events, and only 26 outs in the recorded era have reached 48 — topped by the 49.50 all-time record.
That's why this site paints 45+ in gold everywhere — on the score rails, in the ride histories, and across the standings. When you see gold, you're looking at elite territory.
Reading the numbers on this site
- Bull score — the judges' mark for one out, up to 50.
- Average bull score — a bull's mean across recorded outs; sustained 44+ is a contender, 45+ is historic.
- Championship average — the average across a bull's qualifying premier-series and World Finals outs; the number that decides the world title.
- Buckoff % — how often the rider failed to last 8 seconds; the bull's win rate.
Distribution computed by WorldChampionBull from PBR Data API ride records at the most recent sync. Judging criteria as commonly described in PBR's public materials; see Data & Sources for definitions.