Launching Premier Lacrosse: Paul Rabil’s plan to redefine the professional sports landscape

Paul Rabil, a professional lacrosse player and entrepreneur, redefines perceptions of professional sports leagues with the launch of the Premier Lacrosse League.

Paul Rabil, a professional player and entrepreneur, shocked the lacrosse world last September when he announced he was starting his own professional lacrosse league. What was most shocking was not Rabil’s announcement of yet another professional men’s lacrosse league in a dwindling market with two other already established leagues. What was truly shocking was how Paul and Mike Rabil, his brother and co-founder, made the announcement.

The news was not announced through a top lacrosse publication or even a sports outlet. The world was first introduced to the Premier Lacrosse League through an article on Bloomberg and the brothers’ on-camera appearance on Bloomberg Market’s The Close.

When discussing their new venture, Paul and Mike discussed key aspects that differentiated their league not just from the other professional lacrosse leagues, but from other professional sports leagues.

They said they would provide the players with equity in the league, something that had never been done before in North American professional sports. The league would follow a tour-based model and travel from city to city, an unconventional approach for capturing the “must-see-event” experience that non-team sports such as NASCAR and WWE provide. The league would also maintain ownership over the teams and operate as a single entity, which would allow for a singular vision and avoid the pitfalls that new franchise-based leagues face.

If the Bloomberg announcement revealed anything about the Rabil brothers’ intentions with the Premier Lacrosse League, it was that they intended to redefine the landscape of professional sports. By offering players equity, financial stake in the league and a share in its profits, they provided a unique way to financially compensate players, an issue that is a common point of conflict in professional sports at every level.

“It’s critical to us that our players are positioned as stakeholders in professional lacrosse,” Paul Rabil said.

"“What we have seen is this new athlete investor, whether it’s Kevin Durant or Kobe Bryant or Lebron James investing in startups or many of them in lieu of a cash compensation are now asking for an equity position. So we think the future of team sports is that athletes are going to continue to move in that direction and we’re at the forefront of it.”"

Focusing on the players

Paul Rabil’s journey as a professional lacrosse player began like so many other professional lacrosse players: transitioning from a college athlete playing on national television to a part-time professional player balancing a full-time, 9-to-5 job.

However, Rabil, who’s never been one to settle for the status quo, decided to quit his full-time job and start his own business running lacrosse camps and clinics. Soon after, he started his own YouTube channel and later signed an endorsement with Warrior with the goal of becoming a full-time player.

“When I graduated college in 2008, the average wage was in the range of $8,000 to $10,000,” Paul Rabil said. “To be a full-time lacrosse player, entrepreneurship was not an option but a necessity.”

Despite building a million-dollar brand and achieving success on and off the field, Rabil still was frustrated with the professional lacrosse environment that was unable to pay him and his fellow players with full-time wages and provide the type of national exposure that players desired.

“For a long time, players have been moonlighting as professional lacrosse athletes and they have a traditional job that supports them financially. We knew that there were a couple of things we needed to get right for this league to take the next step in mainstream awareness and the first was to take care of the players.”

So after attempts to work with the current leagues, Paul and his brother Mike decided to start their own league with the goal of offering players full-time wages of a minimum $25,000, healthcare and a platform that would showcase their skills to a national audience.

“This was just as much the players coming to us as it was us reaching out to the players,” Paul Rabil said. “We set out to prove that we could offer full-time wages, equity in the league and showcase what a modern professional lacrosse player could be.”

In the evolving professional sports landscape where athletes’ personal brands have transcended the franchises they play for, Paul and Mike recognized that the need to focus on players was just as important to the fans as it was to the players.

“We believe the trend of following players has always been there. Decades ago fans were still following players such as Joe Namath and ‘Pistol’ Pete Marovich, but before the age of social media and streaming, you were limited to watching the star players in your region and could only see other team’s [star players] a handful of times,” Paul Rabil said.

“Now thanks to the emergence of new media, sports fans have access to watch their favorite players,” Rabil added. “This has helped sports like lacrosse that don’t always get national attention continue to grow.”

The PLL has showcased its commitment to a “players-first” approach through the content it has produced. Team rosters were revealed in “bitmoji” form through players’ personal social media accounts. Video features on players have been produced with plans to cover everything from players’ upbringings to the philanthropic causes they support.

“When we watch sports we remember the big moments such as a game-winning goal as time expires,” Paul Rabil said. “However, when we know the story behind that player who makes the game-winning goal, it adds another level to the moment. That’s why we are investing in supplemental content about our players because we want to get behind the helmet and add that extra emotional level to the fans’ experience when watching our games.”

“There has been some brand damage to the sport of lacrosse over the past 10 years,” added Mike Rabil, who will serve as the PLL’s CEO. “We plan to change [perceptions] by not just saying it, but through actual storytelling.

"“A lot of our players come from diverse backgrounds. Whether you come from a white-collar background, blue-collar background, or low-income background, there is still a place in the lacrosse community for you. We plan to highlight this by celebrating our players as individuals and showing the obstacles many of them had to face.”"

Showcasing professional lacrosse at a national level

Despite the many advantages that new media channels provide, a challenge the PLL faced was determining how to best showcase its games on a national level. With fan attendance at professional lacrosse games declining (six 2018 Major League Lacrosse teams experienced a drop in attendance, with some teams declining as much as 25 percent year-over-year), the PLL needed a way to ensure it could maximize the number of fans who could watch its games.

“The pro lacrosse market had started to grow stagnant and sponsorships were on the decline so we knew something had to be done,” Paul Rabil said. “When we spoke to our investors we really wanted to show them that there was a need. Lacrosse is the fastest growing team sport in the country; we know that it is the oldest North American sport. So why is the professional level having a hard time putting fans in seats?”

To address the need to increase fan attendance, Paul and Mike needed a way to reach lacrosse’s biggest fanbases in hotbeds such as Long Island and Baltimore, while still attaining national exposure. This ultimately led to the decision to structure the season using a tour-based model with the goal of replicating the feel of the biggest annual lacrosse event: the NCAA Lacrosse Championship Weekend.

“The tour-based model made sense to us because we already had data on how the lacrosse community responds to weekend-based events,” Paul Rabil said. “We saw an opportunity to replicate the experience of the college lacrosse championship on Memorial Day weekend for a different city each weekend.”

Additionally, the Rabils needed to consider a model that was not only advantageous from an exposure perspective but an economical one.

“The other advantage of the tour-based model is the economics of having a one-weekend event can minimize the third-party market from eating into ticket sales, so it is more sustainable,” Paul Rabil said.

The PLL will open its season at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., which has been home to several national championship weekends and plans to visit traditional lacrosse areas such as Baltimore and Washington, D.C., as well as areas where lacrosse has seen recent rapid growth in youth participation such as Chicago, Atlanta, and San Jose, Calif.

Yet Mike and Paul knew that a touring model alone would not be able to provide the national exposure they desired, so they partnered with NBC Sports on an exclusive broadcast deal. As part of the deal, NBC will feature every PLL game on either NBC Sports or their streaming service NBC Gold, with several of the games being aired on NBC’s main channel as well.

Furthermore, the PLL and NBC will share advertising revenue from commercial spots, with brands such as Adidas, which the PLL recently announced as its official shoe and apparel outfitter, being among those committed to buying commercial air time during broadcasts.

https://twitter.com/PaulRabil/status/1095836342787993600

“NBC Sports is in 83 million homes, with NBC main in 110 million homes. The television deal we struck allows those fans in the middle of the country to also view lacrosse,” Mike Rabil said. “The game of lacrosse is fast and exciting and we want the fans, whether they’re watching on TV or digitally, to really experience that.”

Mike also spoke on how the league plans to differentiate the sport through its broadcasts and push the boundaries of how fans watch live sports.

“We need to bring new fans to the sport of lacrosse and we think we can do that through our broadcast deal with NBC,” Mike Rabil said. “We are investing a meaningful amount of resources into the broadcast. You are going to see things in our live broadcasts that have never been done before in any live sport.”

Building a modern professional sports league

While the Rabil brothers had a vision for their new league, another key piece of the puzzle was how to structure the league itself.

“We decided to operate as a single entity so we aren’t hampered by some of the challenges that the major sports leagues face,” Paul Rabil said. “This provides advantages from both an economic perspective as well as a marketing [perspective]. We are able to effectively form partnerships at a league level and maintain a consistent brand which benefits our players and our fans.”

Paul Rabil said they took inspiration from how Major League Soccer (MLS) is operated. Instead of operating as an association of independently owned teams, the MLS is a single entity in which each team is owned by the league and individually operated by the league’s investors. The PLL takes the idea a step farther and operates the teams using a centralized pool of league investors.

The MLS ties don’t end there, though. The PLL targeted MLS stadiums, that typically house 20,000-25,000 fans, to use during its tour, with the New York Red Bulls Stadium, DC United’s Audi Field and Los Angeles FC’s Banc of California Stadium currently slated to host this summer.

However, one common criticism of the new venture is that Paul Rabil, one of the sport’s biggest stars, would be both operating and playing in the league. This left the question “How does a league intend to produce an impartial, competitive environment when one of its athletes is overseeing nearly every aspect of its development?”

That’s where Josh Sims, PLL’s head of lacrosse, comes in.

Sims, a three-time All-American at Princeton where he won two NCAA titles, was hired in January to oversee operations and game day management. It was Sims’s management career in the product development, technology, sports, and retail industries that made him a perfect fit for the job. In addition to a 13-year indoor and outdoor professional lacrosse career, Sims’s resume includes heading the lacrosse division at Under Armour and managing product integrity for the company’s fitness, golf and tennis products.

“As a player and a businessman, I’ve seen it from both sides,” Sims said. “I think that perspective is valuable especially as we try and build a product from the ground up and determine how we can build it for both our players and our fans.”

As the Head of Lacrosse, Sims oversees the league’s competition, management of coaches and players, as well as leads the implementation of league rules and statistics. His job also includes working closely with the PLL Lacrosse Advisory Board, which helped form the six teams and provides further governance on the awards systems and maintenance of fair and competitive play.

Mike Rabil also revealed that the league’s six head coaches will act as general managers and operate the teams independently, assuring that when it comes to the sports side of the league, things will remain similar to any other professional sports league with teams drafting and trading players.

By keeping the lacrosse side managed by Sims separate from the business side, the Rabils aim to prevent potential conflicts of interest and ensure a competitive environment.

The future of the league

Ultimately, the play on the field will be just one of many factors that determine the PLL’s present and future success. Fan attendance and TV ratings will also be important indicators of the league’s viability long-term.

Yet, while the Rabils continue to tackle the ever-growing business challenges of running a professional sports league, they haven’t lost sight of why they started the league in the first place.

“When we think about what we’re trying to do, we try and focus on creating a great experience for the lacrosse fans, the players that came before and currently play, and all the employees behind the scenes. Those are our key stakeholders and we are committed to making sure the experience is rewarding to them,” Mike Rabil said.

“This isn’t a vanity play for us. We’re not doing this because we need to be sports owners,” he added. “We’re building a league that is values-driven and we truly think there is a new way of rethinking and reimagining emerging sports.”