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May 30, 2023

PLL Going Local in Effort to Grow Audience Double Digits YoY

Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) recently announced plans to assign all eight of its clubs to home cities, states, or regions. Locations will be disclosed in the fourth quarter of this year.

The challenger sports property, which is retaining its tour-based business model, is ‘going local’ to try and drive deeper fandom amongst existing lacrosse supporters, greater interest and engagement amongst casual fans, and ultimately more dollars.

“You have to [increasingly] give fans more and more [reasons] to pay attention and to give their time to your business,” Mike Rabil (co-founder, PLL) said.

And tying clubs to cities is a proven way to get people to root for or against a sports property.

PLL hopes the strategic pivot will lift its total audience double digits year-over-year.

“Compound that and it is a pretty significant return across different revenue verticals,” Rabil said.

PLL chose to come out of the gate with city agnostic teams. It wanted to allow young fans to choose their allegiances based on roster compilation, names, colors, and logos, as opposed to where their parent(s) chose to set up shop.

And with a tour-based business model, as opposed to the more traditional home-and-away scheduling format, that approach made sense.

PLL went down the tour-based path because of its desire to grow the game nationwide. It was also more capital efficient for the league to keep moving than setting up shop in more than a handful of markets and the model enabled the league to strike the most advantageous media deals possible (as it could be more malleable with the schedule).

PLL initially had a broadcast partnership with NBC. It is now aligned with ESPN.

The league is retaining its tour-based approach, so it will continue to enjoy the relative scale and operational efficiencies that come along with it. PLL will also get to continue visiting new and/or emerging markets each year.  

However, moving forward, each of its clubs will be associated with a city, state, or region. A robust fan journey survey and a subsequent series of intimate case studies confirmed there is an opportunity for the challenger league to derive greater passion and deeper engagement from its core fan base.

“70% are fans of the league before the teams,” Rabil said.

PLL recognizes that fans can only be so passionate about a league and are looking to change that. Local teams are often viewed with a sense of pride and the hope is over time market affiliations will serve as another reason for fans to be invested in the games’ outcome.

The emerging property also believes by aligning itself closer with long-held sports traditions that it can cast a wider net amongst casual fans.

“Teams having city-based affiliation or home markets is the universal language of fanhood,” Rabil said. “It is the way, historically, that people root for their teams.”

Gen-Z sports fans are more fluid in their fandom than prior generations. But PLL is not expecting the demo to instantly embrace a given club because it has been assigned to their home market. The league understands it will require hard work to make casual sports fans pay attention, particularly in markets with an abundance of pro teams (like New York).

Each of the eight cities/states/regions will host a home double-header weekend beginning next season (’23-’24) and the league will have personnel on the ground in all of them cultivating fandom year-round.

“We are going to be building small teams and offices in these markets," Rabil said. "We’re going to be doing non-profit work and and supporting local youth lacrosse efforts in these markets.”

The league will also look to find ways for its players to become ingrained within the communities, lean on local influencers and media partners to promote the teams, and pursue select real estate opportunities as they come available.

“Fields we can have access to and training facilities,” Rabil said. “It’s multi-prong. You must be omnipresent and do the real work [to grow fandom].”

Training camps could end up taking place in the clubs’ home markets too.

Rabil said the league’s commitment to local marketing and community engagement will be its largest investment since merging with Major League Lacrosse in 2020. That league operated a traditional city-based business model.

The eight home cities/states/regions have not yet been decided. While some are certain to be traditional lacrosse hotbeds, others will be up and coming markets that have proven to have both passionate fans and motivated promoters and/or stadium operators. PLL fans will get a chance to have a say at PLLvote.com.

The league believes its local efforts will pay off at the gate quickly.

“We’re expecting ticket sales to increase as we make this investment into home markets,” Rabil said.

Longer term, the expectation is that increased fan engagement will drive brand partnership growth and media rights value too (never mind more kids playing the game).

In addition to annual stops in the eight home markets, PLL is planning to visit six neutral sites each season (two regular season weekends, all-star weekend, three playoff weekends). Presumably, some of those cities, states or regions could eventually be awarded an expansion franchise.

PLL is not planning to pivot from its centralized ownership model. While the league would like to retain the optionality to sell franchises down the line, it would require interest from several strong operators with ancillary real estate development opportunities to move on it.

“Real estate is a huge part of franchise ownership,” Rabil said. “And [having] the right size stadium that you can run programming out of [is also critical].”

In the meantime, the focus will be on growing the fan base–and ultimately the top line.