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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The NBA finals are over,

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Speaker 1: the Stanley Cup playoffs, you're winding down, and the NFL

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Speaker 1: season doesn't start until September. Summer is for baseball. But

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Speaker 1: that's pretty much it, says Bloomberg's Bailey Lipshaltz.

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Speaker 2: It's kind of in a dead period for most sports,

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Speaker 2: so there is a lot of filler and for when

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Speaker 2: you're looking at a target demographic of primarily call it

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Speaker 2: teenage two, late early forties on the male perspective, guys

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Speaker 2: need something to do when they're watching sports.

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Speaker 1: Paul Rabel is hoping to convince that target demographic to

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Speaker 1: start watching men's lacrosse.

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Speaker 3: What we're excited about as operators of one of the

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Speaker 3: fastest growing sports leagues in the world year over year

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Speaker 3: is that a lot more smart capital and institutional capital

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Speaker 3: private equity is coming into pro sports.

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Speaker 2: Exactly.

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Speaker 1: Rabels started the Premier Lacrosse League in twenty eighteen. It

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Speaker 1: merged with Major League Lacrosse in twenty twenty, but since

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Speaker 1: then it hasn't been easy to break through.

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Speaker 4: It is a huge enterprise, requires a lot of investment,

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Speaker 4: a lot of support.

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Speaker 1: So far, the PLL has attracted some big backers, including

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Speaker 1: the owners of the New England Patriots and the Brooklyn Nets,

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Speaker 1: and it signed multimillion dollar deals with some big TV networks.

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Speaker 1: Bailey says those investors buy into Rabel's vision of the

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Speaker 1: potential payoff of making lacrosse more popular.

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Speaker 2: I think the vision is if this is a league

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Speaker 2: that can replicate the success of a number of other leagues.

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Speaker 2: When you look at the funding that we've seen in

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Speaker 2: the MLS, even in professional pickleball, there's a lot of

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Speaker 2: money to be made in sports, and so the vision

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Speaker 2: if they can build it into a much larger sport,

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Speaker 2: a much larger league that can be more kind of

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Speaker 2: in line with an MBA, MLS, MLB. The returns are lofty.

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Speaker 1: But the league faces in uncertain future and for athletes

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Speaker 1: it's challenging. I'm David Gera and today on the Big Take,

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Speaker 1: what the push to bring professional lacrosse into the mainstream

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Speaker 1: can tell us about this particular moment when there's more

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Speaker 1: interest than ever in all kinds of sports, yet it's

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Speaker 1: harder than ever to break through.

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Speaker 2: I write about equities by day, and apparently Moonlight on

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Speaker 2: the lacrosse beat.

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Bailey Lipshaltz says he got interested in the lacrosse

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Speaker 1: beat because of where he went to college.

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Speaker 2: It's really a niche sport. I grew up an hour

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Speaker 2: east of Los Angeles, and I didn't know lacrosse was

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Speaker 2: really a sport until I went to Syracuse.

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Speaker 1: University regularly has one of the highest ranked teams in

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Speaker 1: the US. Well recently, Bailey says he noticed that efforts

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Speaker 1: to turn lacrosse into a proper professional sports business had

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Speaker 1: been gaining momentum. The Premier Lacrosse League debuted in twenty eighteen,

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Speaker 1: and at first it was mostly for hobbyists who played

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Speaker 1: on the weekends.

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Speaker 2: Back in the founding days of twenty nineteen inaugural season.

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Speaker 2: When it merged in twenty twenty with Major League Lacrosse,

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Speaker 2: the pace still wasn't high enough, so guys were doing

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Speaker 2: both a kind of day job and playing lacrosse. Now,

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Speaker 2: at least when you talk to pl that number has

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Speaker 2: kind of flipped, so more guys are going full time.

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Speaker 1: It helps that the compensation has improved. According to Bailey,

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Speaker 1: it started around eight thousand dollars a season, and now.

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Speaker 2: The low end is load to mid thirty thousand dollars

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Speaker 2: up to the seventy to eighty thousand dollars range.

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Speaker 1: Still that's not exactly enough to make you want to

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Speaker 1: quit your day job. But something else that's attracting players

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Speaker 1: PLL is it's a little bit different than say, Minor

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Speaker 1: League Baseball.

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Speaker 2: Premier Lcross league's a travel based league. So while there

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Speaker 2: are teams that represent cities the Philadelphia Water Dogs, New

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Speaker 2: York Atlas, those guys don't live there necessarily. It's a

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Speaker 2: travel based league in the sense that the league basically

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Speaker 2: drops in on a weekend, normally Saturday and Sundays. We'll

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Speaker 2: have two games on one day, two games on the

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Speaker 2: other day, and that's just kind of how it goes,

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Speaker 2: and they pack up and move back on.

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Speaker 1: One of those players is Jake Carraway. Bailey spoke to

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Speaker 1: him on the sidelines of one of this season's first

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Speaker 1: games in Albany.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, it's definitely a very busy summer juggling both, you know,

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Speaker 5: working all week. We're up early to train, work out,

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Speaker 5: get after it, then in the office and you know, traveling.

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Speaker 1: Either Hereaway is a twenty six year old investment banking

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Speaker 1: associate at Barclay's. He'll spend the next few months balancing

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Speaker 1: life as a pro athlete with a full time job

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Speaker 1: in finance.

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Speaker 5: The East Coast game are pretty easy. It's a quick

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Speaker 5: amtrack or a flight up and down. But San Diego,

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Speaker 5: especially this summer, we're playing on a Sunday evening game.

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Speaker 5: I think I don't know the exact time, but that's

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Speaker 5: gonna be a tough one.

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Speaker 1: As Bailey says about what Carraway and many of his

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Speaker 1: teammates are doing.

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Speaker 2: It's really two full time jobs.

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Speaker 1: One thing that's made it a little easier to juggle

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Speaker 1: Wall Street jobs and matches on the weekend is the

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Speaker 1: way work has changed since the pandemic.

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Speaker 2: That enabled some of these guys to keep playing where

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Speaker 2: maybe they might not have been able to.

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Speaker 1: Like Ryan Conrad, Bailey also spoke with him on the

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Speaker 1: sidelines in Albany.

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Speaker 6: That is the beauty of the world we live in

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Speaker 6: with technological advancements and COVID.

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Speaker 1: He is a twenty seven year old associate at the

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Speaker 1: private equity firm KKR who plays on the same team

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Speaker 1: as Jake Carraway, the Philadelphia water Dogs.

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Speaker 6: They've made it super easy where you get essentially do

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Speaker 6: your entire job while you're on the route with Chester Vonder.

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Speaker 1: Conrad says another thing making it easy is that his

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Speaker 1: bosses at KKR are pretty encouraging of his dreams to

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Speaker 1: play pro lacrosse.

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Speaker 7: I have a really really supportive group at KKAR, and

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Speaker 7: you know what I've been able to do is just

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Speaker 7: generally been working mostly in the evenings and in the

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Speaker 7: mornings and in between sessions when I can.

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Speaker 1: But even as Conrad and Caraway make the chaos of

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Speaker 1: juggling full time jobs with full time schedules work, Bailey

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Speaker 1: says that the league's president, Paul Rabel, is hoping that

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Speaker 1: more investment will make it possible for more athletes just

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Speaker 1: to play lacrosse.

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Speaker 2: When you get a few rookie draft classes of guys

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Speaker 2: who are full time, then that can change kind of

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Speaker 2: the tenor of the league, where if you're coming up

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Speaker 2: knowing that you're going to play full time lacrosse and

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Speaker 2: at least to start your career, you can put off

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Speaker 2: finance that's going to foster a higher level of play

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Speaker 2: and therefore foster more guys to.

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Speaker 1: Do it coming up after the break. Paul Rabel's plan

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Speaker 1: to turn the PLL into a viable career option and

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Speaker 1: what success could mean for other fledgling sports from pickleball

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Speaker 1: to cornhole looking to find an audience. Paul Rabel is

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Speaker 1: behind the latest push to make professional lacrosse more popular

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Speaker 1: and more successful commercially. Rabel was a midfielder on two

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Speaker 1: national championship teams at Johns Hopkins and went pro after graduation.

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Speaker 1: He and his brother started the Premier Lacrosse League, the

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Speaker 1: PLL in twenty eighteen, when the NCAA said its popularity

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Speaker 1: was taking off.

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Speaker 4: It's a sport that has been growing faster than any

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Speaker 4: other major team sport in North America over the last

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Speaker 4: fifteen years. It's getting sanctioned at the high school and

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Speaker 4: college level faster than any other team sport.

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Speaker 1: The Rabel brothers have spent years raising money from the

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Speaker 1: likes of Robert Kraft and Joe ci who owns the

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Speaker 1: Brooklyn Nets and the New York Liberty. NBA star Kevin

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Speaker 1: Durantz v C Fund has invested, and the Rabels have

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Speaker 1: also brokeer deals with major TV networks, first with NBC

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Speaker 1: and more recently with ABC.

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Speaker 4: Being on ABC eight times every summer and then another

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Speaker 4: eight or ESPN and ESPN two and all of our

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Speaker 4: games live stream on ESPN Plus, but getting the shareability

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Speaker 4: across their live and daily programming across their social media

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Speaker 4: that has north of fifty million followers per account, that

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Speaker 4: over time creates a level of understanding between sports fans

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Speaker 4: and lacrosse players and the pol much like what ESPN

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Speaker 4: helped the UFC doing.

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Speaker 2: Week.

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Speaker 1: It might be counterintuitive, but Rabel cites the UFC that's

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Speaker 1: the Ultimate Fighting Championship as a model for how lacrosse

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Speaker 1: could take off. Bloomberg's Bailey Lipshaltz explains that's not as

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Speaker 1: out there as it might seem.

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Speaker 2: When you look at what UFC was when it first

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Speaker 2: came on the scene, it was people were confused. People

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Speaker 2: who enjoyed boxing didn't understand why they'd want to watch

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Speaker 2: mixed martial arts. But then you look at the branding

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Speaker 2: because from that perspective, what the UFC did was it

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Speaker 2: benefits ESPN if people watch, and that kind of what

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Speaker 2: created a vicious cycle, and then you get star power

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Speaker 2: and people want to know what they're doing. That drives

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Speaker 2: them to the ESPN platform, but also then increases the

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Speaker 2: interest in advertising dollars, interest in paying to watch some

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Speaker 2: of those fights. So when you look at what they

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Speaker 2: were able to do with UFC, it completely changed, whereas

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Speaker 2: now I think most people know what Ultimate Fighting Championship is.

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Speaker 1: The idea is that exposure could create stars, but first

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Speaker 1: the league will need to enable athletes to play full

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Speaker 1: time so they can unlock that potential. The PLL offers

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Speaker 1: healthcare and equity in the league to players, many of

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Speaker 1: whom are trying to score endorsement deals, but most of

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Speaker 1: them simply can't pay the bills without working a day job.

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Speaker 1: Here's Paul Rabel again, it's ultra.

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Speaker 4: Challenging because they're having to sort of burn the candle

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Speaker 4: on both ends, from studying film and their works done

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Speaker 4: to getting their workouts in early morning, sacrificing sleep. And

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Speaker 4: we know the fountain of youth is nutrition and rest.

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Speaker 1: One consequence of this, Rabel says, is they're likely to

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Speaker 1: have shorter pro lacrosse careers as a result, they're stretched

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Speaker 1: too thin. That's why what Rabel wants is for the

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Speaker 1: money in pro lacrosse to be good enough that these

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Speaker 1: athletes can play without having to moonlight.

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Speaker 4: And as attention and revenue continues to grow for the league,

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Speaker 4: so will total game allotment. What we call tonnage, which

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Speaker 4: means more games, greater wages, more sponsorship dollars, more opportunity

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Speaker 4: for fans to integrate.

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Speaker 1: Lidberg's Bailey Lipshalt says that expanding the pool of potential

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Speaker 1: players will be critical to its future success.

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Speaker 2: The interesting question is, as they think about expansion, if

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Speaker 2: you go from the current eighteen format and hypothetically make

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Speaker 2: it ten, twelve, fourteen, then you're kind of stretching that

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Speaker 2: pool of guys who can play full time lacrosse.

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Speaker 1: Growing the number of teams means more games and potentially

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Speaker 1: more advertising dollars as well as more exposure which can

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Speaker 1: help create star lacrosse players and enthusiasm for the sport.

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Speaker 2: And one of the interesting things from the league's perspective

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Speaker 2: and trying to get more guys to go full time,

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Speaker 2: is that they want to lean into marketing. So they

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Speaker 2: want these guys to be if they're interested, social media marketers, advertising,

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Speaker 2: So they're partnering with different league sponsors who maybe aren't

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Speaker 2: the ticketmaster who's named in the league, but Jude Wifes

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Speaker 2: are other companies that can kind of lean into the

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Speaker 2: target demographic that these guys cater to.

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Speaker 1: It's a lot of threads that will need to come

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Speaker 1: together to make lacrosse into the multi billion dollar business

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Speaker 1: Rabel is imagining. But if it does work, it could

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Speaker 1: be potentially a roadmap for other sports, some more athletic

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Speaker 1: than others. I'm interested in sort of what's making this

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Speaker 1: possible culturally, So we're seeing in the US kind of

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Speaker 1: the death of monocultures. You can seek out what you're

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Speaker 1: interested in. You older have to watch the thing that's

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Speaker 1: on TV. And I wonder if you've thought about how

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Speaker 1: that's fueling, yes, interest in professional lacrosse, but also just

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Speaker 1: kind of a wider variety of sports and the possibility

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Speaker 1: there could be more professional sports leagues.

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Speaker 2: When you look at what sports leagues like the Cornhole

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Speaker 2: League have done. When you look at the viewership related

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Speaker 2: to darts, it takes you back to the early early

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Speaker 2: days at ESPN where they were showing completely random sports

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Speaker 2: just because they had to fill time with sports. And

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Speaker 2: if you're twenty four seven sports network, you need content.

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Speaker 2: When you look at to your point, the fact that

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Speaker 2: people are leaning more into some of these niche opportunities,

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Speaker 2: it draws greater advertising dollars. You can better target your

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Speaker 2: viewers if you know who's going to watch corn hole

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Speaker 2: on a Saturday afternoon. But I also think it does

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Speaker 2: drive interest in the sport as a whole. If you

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Speaker 2: didn't grow up knowing that lacrosse was a sport, and

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Speaker 2: now it's on ESPN every weekend, it becomes more appetizing.

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Speaker 2: If you didn't care to play cornwall and you see

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Speaker 2: it on TV, maybe you're more interested in it.

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Speaker 1: What will be most important, Bailey says, is time. How

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Speaker 1: long will athletes and investors and advertisers be willing to

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Speaker 1: wait to see if professional lacrosse can grow a fan.

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Speaker 2: Base, Whether or not it succeeds or fails. It's tough

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Speaker 2: to call or really think about because it still is growing.

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Speaker 2: Are they going to overnight be able to build the

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Speaker 2: next NFL? That took a long time. When you look

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Speaker 2: at the success we've seen with the WNBA or the

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Speaker 2: MLS to an extent, it took a long time and

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Speaker 2: was very gradual growth.

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Speaker 1: And they're the exceptions, just as the founders of Pro

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Speaker 1: rugby or Major League Ultimate or Roller Hockey International. This

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Speaker 1: is the Big Time from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera.

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Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Alex Sekura and Jessica Beck,

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Speaker 1: who also fact checked it. It was edited by Stacy

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Speaker 1: Vanix Smith and Tim Annette. It was mixed by Veronica Rodriguez.

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Speaker 1: Our senior producers are Kim Gittelson and Naomi Shaven, and

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Speaker 1: our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beamster Boror is

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Speaker 1: our executive producer. Sage Bauman is our head of podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. Please follow and review The

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Speaker 1: Big Take wherever you get your podcasts. It helps new

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Speaker 1: listeners find the show. We'll be back next week.