The Next Great Major Professional Sports League

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Friends,

Less than two years after their official launch, the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL)—a direct competitor to its legacy Major League Lacrosse (MLL) counterpart—has announced they’ve reached an agreement to merge.

The merger will create one unified outdoor professional lacrosse league under the PLL brand.

Here are the details:

• The PLL will expand from 7 to 8 teams, adding the MLL's Boston Cannons — who will rebrand as the Cannons Lacrosse Club.

• The PLL will retain the rights to the other 5 remaining MLL teams for future expansion purposes.

• The PLL will continue to operate on a tour-based model, rather than the MLL’s geo-franchise model.

Here’s what Mike Rabil—co-founder and CEO of the PLL—had to say regarding the merger agreement:

Financial details of the agreement haven’t been made public, but the real question becomes:

What exactly does this mean for professional lacrosse?

First, some history…

For those who aren’t aware, professional lacrosse has always been a grind.

Imagine dedicating the amount of time necessary to excel at your sport professionally but still having to work 9-5 in order to pay rent. That’s the challenge most aspiring professional lacrosse players deal with.

In late 2018, Paul Rabil—the most recognizable name in lacrosse—perfectly summarized the challenges he faced when transitioning from college to a professional career (Source).

Traditionally, if a player wanted to continue his post-collegiate lacrosse career his best option was Major League Lacrosse (MLL).

Founded in 1999 as a “semi-professional” league, MLL players earned annual salaries of about $10,000 on average. Players and staff held other jobs and the league did not provide health insurance.

Growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of support, Paul Rabil and his brother Mike decided to shake things up.

Their plan to fix it?

The Premier Lacrosse League.

In late 2018, Paul Rabil and his brother Mike co-founded the Premier Lacrosse League — a direct competitor to Major League Lacrosse.

The pitch was simple…

The PLL was backed by serious investors including billionaire Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai, The Raine Group and Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which allowed them to offer a few key differences when recruiting players to their upstart league.

Here are a few of the differences:

• The PLL pays players an average salary of $35,000, compared to the MLL average of ~$10,000.

• The PLL offered its players equity ownership in the league.

• All PLL players are given health care coverage.

Simply put, the Rabil brothers wanted to increase the quality of play within professional lacrosse by giving players the option to make it a full-time career.

The interesting part?

It worked.

Since 2018, the Rabil brothers have transformed the game of lacrosse.

They’ve done things like removing wide angled cameras, shortening the field of play, reducing the shot clock to speed up the pace of play, introducing yellow balls instead of white, and interviewing players intra-game to add excitement.

In return, the PLL was rewarded with a multi-year exclusive broadcasting deal with NBC — which not only saw the upstart lacrosse league featured on TV broadcast channels, but also cross promoted through social and affiliated NBC sports properties like the NFL & NHL.

In 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging sports leagues all across the world, the PLL thrived.

Rather than attempting their traditional tour-based schedule, the PLL pivoted — gathering their seven teams for a 16-day tournament in late July.

Here are some of the highlights, according to Axios:

• Over 1,000 COVID-19 tests were administered with 0 positives

• Ratings were up 27% year-over-year

• Sponsorship revenue was up 59% year-over-year

• Overall league revenue also increased despite no in-person attendance

For the PLL to increase revenue while seemingly every other professional sports league in the world lost billions of dollars collectively, it’s certainly an amazing accomplishment.

As the two professional lacrosse leagues start their transition—moving front office personnel and increasing player talent—it’ll be interesting to see how the newly combined entity utilizes the additional talent to attract viewership.

With the Rabil brothers running the show, it’ll be fun to watch.

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