Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The NBA finals are over,
Speaker 1: the Stanley Cup playoffs, you're winding down, and the NFL
Speaker 1: season doesn't start until September. Summer is for baseball. But
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it, says Bloomberg's Bailey Lipshaltz.
Speaker 2: It's kind of in a dead period for most sports,
Speaker 2: so there is a lot of filler and for when
Speaker 2: you're looking at a target demographic of primarily call it
Speaker 2: teenage two, late early forties on the male perspective, guys
Speaker 2: need something to do when they're watching sports.
Speaker 1: Paul Rabel is hoping to convince that target demographic to
Speaker 1: start watching men's lacrosse.
Speaker 3: What we're excited about as operators of one of the
Speaker 3: fastest growing sports leagues in the world year over year
Speaker 3: is that a lot more smart capital and institutional capital
Speaker 3: private equity is coming into pro sports.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Rabels started the Premier Lacrosse League in twenty eighteen. It
Speaker 1: merged with Major League Lacrosse in twenty twenty, but since
Speaker 1: then it hasn't been easy to break through.
Speaker 4: It is a huge enterprise, requires a lot of investment,
Speaker 4: a lot of support.
Speaker 1: So far, the PLL has attracted some big backers, including
Speaker 1: the owners of the New England Patriots and the Brooklyn Nets,
Speaker 1: and it signed multimillion dollar deals with some big TV networks.
Speaker 1: Bailey says those investors buy into Rabel's vision of the
Speaker 1: potential payoff of making lacrosse more popular.
Speaker 2: I think the vision is if this is a league
Speaker 2: that can replicate the success of a number of other leagues.
Speaker 2: When you look at the funding that we've seen in
Speaker 2: the MLS, even in professional pickleball, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: money to be made in sports, and so the vision
Speaker 2: if they can build it into a much larger sport,
Speaker 2: a much larger league that can be more kind of
Speaker 2: in line with an MBA, MLS, MLB. The returns are lofty.
Speaker 1: But the league faces in uncertain future and for athletes
Speaker 1: it's challenging. I'm David Gera and today on the Big Take,
Speaker 1: what the push to bring professional lacrosse into the mainstream
Speaker 1: can tell us about this particular moment when there's more
Speaker 1: interest than ever in all kinds of sports, yet it's
Speaker 1: harder than ever to break through.
Speaker 2: I write about equities by day, and apparently Moonlight on
Speaker 2: the lacrosse beat.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Bailey Lipshaltz says he got interested in the lacrosse
Speaker 1: beat because of where he went to college.
Speaker 2: It's really a niche sport. I grew up an hour
Speaker 2: east of Los Angeles, and I didn't know lacrosse was
Speaker 2: really a sport until I went to Syracuse.
Speaker 1: University regularly has one of the highest ranked teams in
Speaker 1: the US. Well recently, Bailey says he noticed that efforts
Speaker 1: to turn lacrosse into a proper professional sports business had
Speaker 1: been gaining momentum. The Premier Lacrosse League debuted in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and at first it was mostly for hobbyists who played
Speaker 1: on the weekends.
Speaker 2: Back in the founding days of twenty nineteen inaugural season.
Speaker 2: When it merged in twenty twenty with Major League Lacrosse,
Speaker 2: the pace still wasn't high enough, so guys were doing
Speaker 2: both a kind of day job and playing lacrosse. Now,
Speaker 2: at least when you talk to pl that number has
Speaker 2: kind of flipped, so more guys are going full time.
Speaker 1: It helps that the compensation has improved. According to Bailey,
Speaker 1: it started around eight thousand dollars a season, and now.
Speaker 2: The low end is load to mid thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: up to the seventy to eighty thousand dollars range.
Speaker 1: Still that's not exactly enough to make you want to
Speaker 1: quit your day job. But something else that's attracting players
Speaker 1: PLL is it's a little bit different than say, Minor
Speaker 1: League Baseball.
Speaker 2: Premier Lcross league's a travel based league. So while there
Speaker 2: are teams that represent cities the Philadelphia Water Dogs, New
Speaker 2: York Atlas, those guys don't live there necessarily. It's a
Speaker 2: travel based league in the sense that the league basically
Speaker 2: drops in on a weekend, normally Saturday and Sundays. We'll
Speaker 2: have two games on one day, two games on the
Speaker 2: other day, and that's just kind of how it goes,
Speaker 2: and they pack up and move back on.
Speaker 1: One of those players is Jake Carraway. Bailey spoke to
Speaker 1: him on the sidelines of one of this season's first
Speaker 1: games in Albany.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's definitely a very busy summer juggling both, you know,
Speaker 5: working all week. We're up early to train, work out,
Speaker 5: get after it, then in the office and you know, traveling.
Speaker 1: Either Hereaway is a twenty six year old investment banking
Speaker 1: associate at Barclay's. He'll spend the next few months balancing
Speaker 1: life as a pro athlete with a full time job
Speaker 1: in finance.
Speaker 5: The East Coast game are pretty easy. It's a quick
Speaker 5: amtrack or a flight up and down. But San Diego,
Speaker 5: especially this summer, we're playing on a Sunday evening game.
Speaker 5: I think I don't know the exact time, but that's
Speaker 5: gonna be a tough one.
Speaker 1: As Bailey says about what Carraway and many of his
Speaker 1: teammates are doing.
Speaker 2: It's really two full time jobs.
Speaker 1: One thing that's made it a little easier to juggle
Speaker 1: Wall Street jobs and matches on the weekend is the
Speaker 1: way work has changed since the pandemic.
Speaker 2: That enabled some of these guys to keep playing where
Speaker 2: maybe they might not have been able to.
Speaker 1: Like Ryan Conrad, Bailey also spoke with him on the
Speaker 1: sidelines in Albany.
Speaker 6: That is the beauty of the world we live in
Speaker 6: with technological advancements and COVID.
Speaker 1: He is a twenty seven year old associate at the
Speaker 1: private equity firm KKR who plays on the same team
Speaker 1: as Jake Carraway, the Philadelphia water Dogs.
Speaker 6: They've made it super easy where you get essentially do
Speaker 6: your entire job while you're on the route with Chester Vonder.
Speaker 1: Conrad says another thing making it easy is that his
Speaker 1: bosses at KKR are pretty encouraging of his dreams to
Speaker 1: play pro lacrosse.
Speaker 7: I have a really really supportive group at KKAR, and
Speaker 7: you know what I've been able to do is just
Speaker 7: generally been working mostly in the evenings and in the
Speaker 7: mornings and in between sessions when I can.
Speaker 1: But even as Conrad and Caraway make the chaos of
Speaker 1: juggling full time jobs with full time schedules work, Bailey
Speaker 1: says that the league's president, Paul Rabel, is hoping that
Speaker 1: more investment will make it possible for more athletes just
Speaker 1: to play lacrosse.
Speaker 2: When you get a few rookie draft classes of guys
Speaker 2: who are full time, then that can change kind of
Speaker 2: the tenor of the league, where if you're coming up
Speaker 2: knowing that you're going to play full time lacrosse and
Speaker 2: at least to start your career, you can put off
Speaker 2: finance that's going to foster a higher level of play
Speaker 2: and therefore foster more guys to.
Speaker 1: Do it coming up after the break. Paul Rabel's plan
Speaker 1: to turn the PLL into a viable career option and
Speaker 1: what success could mean for other fledgling sports from pickleball
Speaker 1: to cornhole looking to find an audience. Paul Rabel is
Speaker 1: behind the latest push to make professional lacrosse more popular
Speaker 1: and more successful commercially. Rabel was a midfielder on two
Speaker 1: national championship teams at Johns Hopkins and went pro after graduation.
Speaker 1: He and his brother started the Premier Lacrosse League, the
Speaker 1: PLL in twenty eighteen, when the NCAA said its popularity
Speaker 1: was taking off.
Speaker 4: It's a sport that has been growing faster than any
Speaker 4: other major team sport in North America over the last
Speaker 4: fifteen years. It's getting sanctioned at the high school and
Speaker 4: college level faster than any other team sport.
Speaker 1: The Rabel brothers have spent years raising money from the
Speaker 1: likes of Robert Kraft and Joe ci who owns the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Nets and the New York Liberty. NBA star Kevin
Speaker 1: Durantz v C Fund has invested, and the Rabels have
Speaker 1: also brokeer deals with major TV networks, first with NBC
Speaker 1: and more recently with ABC.
Speaker 4: Being on ABC eight times every summer and then another
Speaker 4: eight or ESPN and ESPN two and all of our
Speaker 4: games live stream on ESPN Plus, but getting the shareability
Speaker 4: across their live and daily programming across their social media
Speaker 4: that has north of fifty million followers per account, that
Speaker 4: over time creates a level of understanding between sports fans
Speaker 4: and lacrosse players and the pol much like what ESPN
Speaker 4: helped the UFC doing.
Speaker 2: Week.
Speaker 1: It might be counterintuitive, but Rabel cites the UFC that's
Speaker 1: the Ultimate Fighting Championship as a model for how lacrosse
Speaker 1: could take off. Bloomberg's Bailey Lipshaltz explains that's not as
Speaker 1: out there as it might seem.
Speaker 2: When you look at what UFC was when it first
Speaker 2: came on the scene, it was people were confused. People
Speaker 2: who enjoyed boxing didn't understand why they'd want to watch
Speaker 2: mixed martial arts. But then you look at the branding
Speaker 2: because from that perspective, what the UFC did was it
Speaker 2: benefits ESPN if people watch, and that kind of what
Speaker 2: created a vicious cycle, and then you get star power
Speaker 2: and people want to know what they're doing. That drives
Speaker 2: them to the ESPN platform, but also then increases the
Speaker 2: interest in advertising dollars, interest in paying to watch some
Speaker 2: of those fights. So when you look at what they
Speaker 2: were able to do with UFC, it completely changed, whereas
Speaker 2: now I think most people know what Ultimate Fighting Championship is.
Speaker 1: The idea is that exposure could create stars, but first
Speaker 1: the league will need to enable athletes to play full
Speaker 1: time so they can unlock that potential. The PLL offers
Speaker 1: healthcare and equity in the league to players, many of
Speaker 1: whom are trying to score endorsement deals, but most of
Speaker 1: them simply can't pay the bills without working a day job.
Speaker 1: Here's Paul Rabel again, it's ultra.
Speaker 4: Challenging because they're having to sort of burn the candle
Speaker 4: on both ends, from studying film and their works done
Speaker 4: to getting their workouts in early morning, sacrificing sleep. And
Speaker 4: we know the fountain of youth is nutrition and rest.
Speaker 1: One consequence of this, Rabel says, is they're likely to
Speaker 1: have shorter pro lacrosse careers as a result, they're stretched
Speaker 1: too thin. That's why what Rabel wants is for the
Speaker 1: money in pro lacrosse to be good enough that these
Speaker 1: athletes can play without having to moonlight.
Speaker 4: And as attention and revenue continues to grow for the league,
Speaker 4: so will total game allotment. What we call tonnage, which
Speaker 4: means more games, greater wages, more sponsorship dollars, more opportunity
Speaker 4: for fans to integrate.
Speaker 1: Lidberg's Bailey Lipshalt says that expanding the pool of potential
Speaker 1: players will be critical to its future success.
Speaker 2: The interesting question is, as they think about expansion, if
Speaker 2: you go from the current eighteen format and hypothetically make
Speaker 2: it ten, twelve, fourteen, then you're kind of stretching that
Speaker 2: pool of guys who can play full time lacrosse.
Speaker 1: Growing the number of teams means more games and potentially
Speaker 1: more advertising dollars as well as more exposure which can
Speaker 1: help create star lacrosse players and enthusiasm for the sport.
Speaker 2: And one of the interesting things from the league's perspective
Speaker 2: and trying to get more guys to go full time,
Speaker 2: is that they want to lean into marketing. So they
Speaker 2: want these guys to be if they're interested, social media marketers, advertising,
Speaker 2: So they're partnering with different league sponsors who maybe aren't
Speaker 2: the ticketmaster who's named in the league, but Jude Wifes
Speaker 2: are other companies that can kind of lean into the
Speaker 2: target demographic that these guys cater to.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of threads that will need to come
Speaker 1: together to make lacrosse into the multi billion dollar business
Speaker 1: Rabel is imagining. But if it does work, it could
Speaker 1: be potentially a roadmap for other sports, some more athletic
Speaker 1: than others. I'm interested in sort of what's making this
Speaker 1: possible culturally, So we're seeing in the US kind of
Speaker 1: the death of monocultures. You can seek out what you're
Speaker 1: interested in. You older have to watch the thing that's
Speaker 1: on TV. And I wonder if you've thought about how
Speaker 1: that's fueling, yes, interest in professional lacrosse, but also just
Speaker 1: kind of a wider variety of sports and the possibility
Speaker 1: there could be more professional sports leagues.
Speaker 2: When you look at what sports leagues like the Cornhole
Speaker 2: League have done. When you look at the viewership related
Speaker 2: to darts, it takes you back to the early early
Speaker 2: days at ESPN where they were showing completely random sports
Speaker 2: just because they had to fill time with sports. And
Speaker 2: if you're twenty four seven sports network, you need content.
Speaker 2: When you look at to your point, the fact that
Speaker 2: people are leaning more into some of these niche opportunities,
Speaker 2: it draws greater advertising dollars. You can better target your
Speaker 2: viewers if you know who's going to watch corn hole
Speaker 2: on a Saturday afternoon. But I also think it does
Speaker 2: drive interest in the sport as a whole. If you
Speaker 2: didn't grow up knowing that lacrosse was a sport, and
Speaker 2: now it's on ESPN every weekend, it becomes more appetizing.
Speaker 2: If you didn't care to play cornwall and you see
Speaker 2: it on TV, maybe you're more interested in it.
Speaker 1: What will be most important, Bailey says, is time. How
Speaker 1: long will athletes and investors and advertisers be willing to
Speaker 1: wait to see if professional lacrosse can grow a fan.
Speaker 2: Base, Whether or not it succeeds or fails. It's tough
Speaker 2: to call or really think about because it still is growing.
Speaker 2: Are they going to overnight be able to build the
Speaker 2: next NFL? That took a long time. When you look
Speaker 2: at the success we've seen with the WNBA or the
Speaker 2: MLS to an extent, it took a long time and
Speaker 2: was very gradual growth.
Speaker 1: And they're the exceptions, just as the founders of Pro
Speaker 1: rugby or Major League Ultimate or Roller Hockey International. This
Speaker 1: is the Big Time from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Alex Sekura and Jessica Beck,
Speaker 1: who also fact checked it. It was edited by Stacy
Speaker 1: Vanix Smith and Tim Annette. It was mixed by Veronica Rodriguez.
Speaker 1: Our senior producers are Kim Gittelson and Naomi Shaven, and
Speaker 1: our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beamster Boror is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Sage Bauman is our head of podcasts.
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