When Trevor Brazile left his home in Decatur, Texas, to become a professional cowboy, he was prepared for all the traditional rigors of the rodeo circuit: ornery steers, tumbleweed towns, tiny prize purses and the occasional busted tooth. His notion of "fame" was being asked to sign autographs at the smokeless tobacco booth.

But in the last few years, the 29-year-old has found himself square in the middle of a trend he never imagined. When he's not promoting his new line of cowboy hats or traveling the country in a complimentary 35-foot custom trailer with leather window treatments, he's eating steamed artichokes with sponsors and mingling with celebrity fans. At this weekend's Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, the sport's equivalent of the Super Bowl, he's been put up at the Mirage. "It all feels so foreign to me," says Mr. Brazile, a three-time national champion. "I'm a small-town guy."

So long, lonely campfires. Thanks to a convergence of factors from the recent arena-building boom to the expansion of cable sports channels to a growing number of celebrities glomming on to all things Western, the manly, dusty sport of rodeo is getting an overhaul. In smaller burgs like Greeley, Colo., and more cosmopolitan cities like Chicago and Houston, rodeos are moving to bigger, fancier venues.

Some events offer $300 "chute seats" closer to the dirt and bring in tougher animals guaranteed to buck. Others host pre-rodeo wine tastings and keep masseuses on call for stressed-out spectators watching from suites. Longtime niche sponsors like Justin Boots and U.S. Smokeless Tobacco have been joined by Enterprise Rent- A-Car and Pace Picante Sauce, while the sport's two major sanctioning bodies have signed expanded television deals with several TV networks, including CBS and ESPN. It's getting so popular that some stars and business tycoons are starting to invest by purchasing some of the sport's most fearsome animals. (Jewel, the pop singer, bought a bull originally named "Midnight Confessions.")

While this red-carpet rollout has already killed off some smaller rodeos that can't keep up -- and hasn't so far done much to fatten the average cowboy's paycheck -- it is drawing more fans in urban areas. After years of flat attendance, the 650 rodeos sanctioned by the largest pro circuit, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, drew 24 million spectators in 2004, a 9 percent increase in five years. "We got jazzier," says Ann Bleiker, a spokeswoman for the PRCA. "And so far the good outweighs the bad."

For rodeo, a sport born on ranches in the decades after the Civil War, this is a significant departure from tradition. Rodeo has always been more of a civic enterprise than a profit center (most rodeos still take place in small Western outposts and donate their proceeds to charity). Prize purses have always been paltry -- $900 to the winner isn't unusual -- and most cowboys have long held down regular jobs to make ends meet.

But in recent years, under new management, the sport's sanctioning bodies started to worry that slickly marketed sports like Nascar and even "extreme" sports were siphoning their audience. To fight back, both the PRCA and the other major circuit, the Professional Bull Riders, retooled their seasons to make rodeos easier to package for TV. They bypassed smaller rodeos and put their marketing muscle into tournaments in major cities where select groups of top cowboys compete for bigger payouts.

For cowboys, this move to the mainstream has been a little bemusing. Mr. Brazile, the reigning PRCA all-around champ, had one of his custom trailers featured on ESPN. Star bull rider Ty Murray, who has an agent, has appeared in a commercial for a toasted steak sandwich and posed for an upcoming issue of Esquire. Cowgirl Charmayne James, a retired barrel-racer, has her own eponymous perfume. "It smells like fresh flowers," she says. The riders aren't the only ones getting the star treatment: Rodeo bulls now sell at auctions for as much as $100,000, up from $4,000 a few years ago, according to stock contractors, and have their own fan memorabilia (mostly stuffed animals in their likenesses).

At 46, steer-roper Jake Barnes is one of the sport's elder statesmen. For years he made so little money on tour (about $50,000 on average) that he had to attend 140 events a year and teach steer-roping clinics to cover costs. Nowadays, nearly all his bills are paid by patrons who spoil him with perks like courtside tickets for Phoenix Suns basketball games. More importantly, he's prolonging his career by cutting the number of rodeos he competes in by more than half and focusing on major events like RodeoHouston, where cowboys get to use a private hydrotherapy room. "Sometimes I don't understand it," says Mr. Barnes, who's earned $88,000 in rodeos so far this year. "But now I get to be choosy."

If there's been one catalyst for the change in rodeo it's the annual 10-day PRCA finals in Las Vegas, which has become something of a phenomenon. For this year's event, which starts Friday and will be broadcast on ESPN, every one of the 170,000 tickets has been sold and scalpers are charging as much as $700 for good seats. At a time when Las Vegas is traditionally sleepy, about 90 percent of the hotels on the strip are booked. Even the smaller Professional Bull Riders championship, held in the same arena in late October and early November, drew 85,000 fans, a 49 percent increase from five years ago.

One factor driving the tournament's popularity is its proximity to Hollywood. In 1999, rodeo leaped into the tabloids when Jewel started dating Mr. Murray, the bull-rider. These days, it's not unlikely to see Kiefer Sutherland and Tom Selleck jockeying with executives and casino presidents for "gold buckle" seats in the front row. And some country-music stars pay as much as $50,000 for luxury suites, the arena says.

To corporate sponsors, rodeo is a wonderful anachronism. Not only are most cowboys humble and genuine and happy to shake hands, they say, but the sport now plays in showplace arenas like Houston's Reliant Stadium, which was designed for both the rodeo and the Texans of the National Football League. It's also a cheap date. For $7,500, Houston investment banker Harry Perrin says he was able to impress 20 executives from places like Los Angeles and Chicago for a fraction of what it would have cost for the VIP treatment at a football game. Neal Patterson, chief executive of Cerner Corp., which makes health-care information technology systems, recently became chairman of the board at Kansas City's American Royal Rodeo, a board that also includes executives from Sprint Nextel and H&R Block. Beyond the fact that cowboys "aren't a spoiled group of superathletes," Mr. Patterson says, "there's something odd but great about having your company's name on a bull chute."

Not everyone is benefiting from these changes. Though the Las Vegas finals pays out a respectable $5.2 million, cowboy compensation still lags far behind that of other professional athletes. Last year, the highest-paid rider in the PRCA made $253,000, an increase of only 16 percent from the top earnings in 1999 and less than the minimum salary for a major-league ballplayer. As the sport's focus shifts to the newer, more telegenic tournaments, as many as 50 tiny rodeos have died off in the past decade. With its winner's prize of $900, the Crazy Horse Stampede in Crazy Horse, S.D., is having trouble luring top-ranked cowboys.

Nevertheless, the sport continues to draw unlikely fans. Last month at the invitation of a friend, Jennifer Moss, a Chicago investment banker, put on designer jeans with high heels by Michael Kors and spent an evening in Dallas watching the Interstate Batteries Texas Stampede from a luxury box with uniformed waiters. "It had a luxurious side," says Ms. Moss, "I expected to just see a lot of dirt and animals."

Giddyup!

Cowboys are saddling up for a new rodeo season beginning this month. So pull on those ostrich boots and saunter over to these competitions.

EVENT: Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, Las Vegas, Friday-Dec. 11
VIP PERK: Gold Buckle seat near the chutes, $300
COMMENTS: Buckle bunnies know this is the ultimate rodeo, where the sport's top-earning athletes ride for a record $5.2 million in total prize money. Watch for celebrity bulls like War Dance and broncs like Cool Alley.

EVENT: Minneapolis Invitational, Minneapolis, Dec. 30, 31
VIP PERK: New Year's Eve bash with bull riders, $50 a couple
COMMENTS: The stand-alone sport of bull riding has tripled its number of events in the last 15 years to 30, and this is only the second event of the season. At this event, contenders are introduced with rock music and pyrotechnics. For at least $2,000, a few fans can meet stars like Justin McBride, tour his locker room, and stand on the chutes while he rides.

EVENT: National Western Stock Show & Rodeo, Denver, Jan. 7-22
VIP PERK: Club seat on the arena floor, $50
COMMENTS: More than 130,000 tickets are typically sold during this 75-year-old rodeo, which has a $500,000 purse. One attraction: Whiplash the Rodeo Monkey -- a capuchin who rides around the arena on a border collie.

EVENT: Black Hills Stock Show & Rodeo, Rapid City, S.D. Jan. 27-Feb. 5
VIP PERK: $35 floor seat comes with invite to pre-rodeo party.
COMMENTS: Located just a half-hour's drive north of Mount Rushmore, this rodeo coincides with a buffalo sale (expected high bid: $5,000), a Western trade show with 300 vendors and the Great Plains Shoot-Out, a rodeo for Native Americans.

EVENT: San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, San Antonio, Feb. 3-19
VIP PERK: Terrace suite reached by private elevator, $2,500
COMMENTS: The Spurs pro-basketball team takes a road trip to make room for this behemoth, which includes 70 riders and 900 animals from 17 different ranches. This event is famous for rounding up the priciest and most ornery bulls who buck the hardest (no "hoppers" allowed). Every time a bull competes, the owner gets $250, up from $100 a few years ago.

EVENT: La Fiesta de los Vaqueros, Tucson, Ariz., Feb. 18-26
VIP PERK: Seat in the Vaquero Club, a white tent with catering, $75
COMMENTS: First major outdoor event of the season. The name means "Celebration of the Cowboys," and no wonder: Winter weather here can reach a balmy 70 degrees, so at least 65,000 turn out to watch. Crowds also love the "mutton bustin'," an arena contest for children who want to ride sheep.