Lacrosse League Success
The Premier Lacrosse League debuted its first season on June 1, 2019. The league was started by former 11 season Major League Lacrosse professional, Paul Rabil and his brother Mike Rabil.
The league originally started because Paul wanted to change the league and develop it to fit the athletes from a player perspective of the league. The PLL made changes to benefit the athletes in better media coverage, healthcare, and a better salary.
This league has partnerships with NBC Sports and other outlets to get these players noticed and have more content for the lacrosse fan base to grow. The increase in pay was necessary because Paul mentioned how these professional athletes had to work a side job and play in the league at the same time. In other words, this league wants to give these athletes the opportunity to put their all into the league. In sports, there are countless injuries and these brothers felt that it was important to include healthcare in their growing league.
This league differs from the MLL and other leagues, because it is a 14-week tour based schedule. Unlike a fan paying and going to a Denver Bronco, Arizona Cardinals football game, they are only watching two teams of the NFL play each other. This league offers fans to attend the city and pay to watch a two-day or less tournament of all of the teams in the league.
The league consists of six clubs. The Archers, Atlas, Chaos, Chrome, Redwoods and the champions of the first season, Whipsnakes. However, building off of the first season, the PLL added the seventh team to the league called the Waterdogs. This choice is important to their second season because now the teams are able to take a bye-week in the season and give the athletes time to recover from injuries or just recuperate and regain their mentality for the next game.
The future season of 2020 is lastly adding new cities to the tour-based schedule. One of the new cities is Long Island, New York. The PLL is leaning towards another successful season and with lots of media coverage, inviting women in sports, entering the college draft this year and so much more. It is very difficult to start a new league and the PLL has taken the right steps in the right direction toward success.
