By the Players, For the Fans

Professional lacrosse launched for the first time just over 18 years ago. Over that time players have finally had a chance to play the sport they love as their lively hood. In 2001 the first professional league had launched, Major League Lacrosse, the MLL as it was known.

Over these 20 years the MLL has brought new heights to the sport it self and its participants. Numbers have shown a great increase in participation at all levels and with the new league it gave fans something to look forward to in addition to the college season. As the sport continued to see new heights the responsibility for the MLL became more and more crucial as to how it could put the best product out on the field. As the college game continued to surge with its broadcasting partner in ESPN, the MLL struggled to broadcast their games to a consistent audience. Along with only about 6-9 teams being city based, they weren't exactly reaching their viewer potential as some would expect.

This in turn fell back on the league and its players, not having the best pay rates, sub par treatment as professional athletes, certainly this could be done in a much better way.

On October 22nd, 2018, Paul Rabil, a greatly skilled and decorated player at the world and professional level (MLL), announced that he would be launching his own professional lacrosse league along with his brother and business partner, Mike Rabil. This absolutely rocked the lacrosse world, including myself and everyone wondered how this would all work out. As time grew on, we began to hear more and more about the details of the league. The Premiere Lacrosse League, as it was called, was built "by the players, for the fans", made to give lacrosse the professional treatment that it deserved, starting with the players. I believe the PLL is perfect from a business and marketing standpoint. Each player drafted into the league gets a part of ownership in the league. This is very unique regarding modern sports, and a move that gives the players incentives to taking care of their league. Instead of having city based teams popularly seen in traditional sports leagues, the PLL would follow a tour based model meant to recreate the experience of the NCAA Final Four and championship game, regularly held over Memorial day weekend, every weekend starting June 1 and running into late September.

This idea, similar to NASCAR or professional tennis, has the fans, and mainly the growth of the sport solely in mind. This way the league comes to the fans for maximum exposure, it borrows local stadiums and venues from major cities around the country and create a never before seen experience all summer long. The core that makes this platform so elite, the players. Over the years of Paul Rabil's professional career playing field, box, and the world games, he has had connections to bring the best players in the world along with him among 6 unique team identities. These teams of course must have no regional association due to the fact they are competing all over North America, the Atlas, Chrome, Redwoods, Archers, Whipsnakes, and Chaos all were created as unique identities to be housed under the PLL brand.

As a lacrosse fan, how could you not be more excited? The PLL was not done there, to cap it all off they announced a major time TV deal with their partner NBC to broadcast the games every weekend on a consistent basis to a national television audience. Along with the NBC family, the games that aren't broadcasted to the country, can be streamed using NBC Gold, NBC's paid subscription based platform. Giving fans every game, every weekend, all summer long.

Content has been one way the lacrosse community has set itself apart as one of the largest growing spors in North America. Over the years there have been numerous amounts of video uploaded to YouTube all created by talented individuals and personalities that the PLL has now hired as their full time media team. Over the past 10 years, the general rule about creating lacrosse content has been: The more that is put out, the more the game continues to grow. This has held true over the past decade.

Currently the inaugural season has been a wild success. With two sellout weekends and an enticing few weeks of playoffs, the teams have shown to be unpredictable with dozens of games being decided by just one goal, it is sure to be an all around record summer when it is all said and done.

PLL Homepage: https://www.premierlacrosseleague.com/

PLL YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/pll

The PLL logo is meant to be the image of a lacrosse goal as looking at it from behind, the left side shows a lacrosse "head" which is a part of the stick, the right side shows the league name. The image as a whole is meant to be a shield showing the strength of the league

All 6 PLL teams unique logos, along with each teams "mascot"

An official NBC ad, first revealing the partnership between the two organizations. A never before done deal with a professional lacrosse league

PLL co-founder, Paul Rabil, as shown in his MLL team unifrom, the New York Lizards, edited from green to yellow to avoid showing the teams colors.