Paul Rabil, CNBC Board Game Plan: Ownership Game Panel, July 25, 2023.
Jesse Grant | CNBC
The Premier Lacrosse League hopes to begin selling teams to individual owners or groups by 2028 “or shortly thereafter,” league co-founder Paul Rabil told CNBC.
Rabil said he would like to expand the league from eight teams to up to 16 over the next 10 years, with each franchise independently owned like other U.S. professional leagues. The PLL is in its eighth season, and the league itself currently owns the teams.
Rabil, 40, is perhaps the most famous American lacrosse player in history, playing as a Major League Lacrosse player from 2008 to 2018 before co-founding PLL with his brother Mike. PLL merged with MLL in 2020.
The PLL is one of a number of emerging sports leagues that started with a single-corporate ownership model, along with Ligue 1 Volleyball, the Professional Women’s Hockey League, and the Basketball Africa League.
League One Volleyball recently began selling teams to interested owners who would pay expansion fees to gain control of the franchise. NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum told CNBC Sports last month that the BAL is now beginning that process.
The demand for owning a sports team has skyrocketed in recent years as valuations for the biggest sports such as the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL have soared. Rising team valuations in the so-called Big Four U.S. sports leagues have led a certain class of investors to focus on more affordable teams in Major League Soccer, the National Women’s Soccer League and the WNBA.
Emerging sports leagues like the PLL are trying to prove they can join this mezzanine class of leagues that can command team valuations in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and in some cases close to $1 billion.
Earlier this week, PLL raised $100 million in a Series E funding round aimed at growing the league. Rabil hopes to bring attention to the league and the sport in anticipation of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Lacrosse has not been a medal sport at the Summer Games for nearly 120 years, but will return in 2028.
“The first allotment of lacrosse tickets sold out in 48 hours, so there’s good hype building,” Rabil said.
PLL is backed by a combination of investor companies and wealthy individuals.
However, Rabil believes that if you are a large private equity fund or a strategic company such as: TKO Group, The company, which owns World Wrestling Entertainment, Ultimate Fighting Championship and Professional Bull Riders, wants to buy the league and said, “We definitely intend to have those discussions.”
