Premier Lacrosse League plans to bring in team owners by 2028 'or soon thereafter,' co-founder says

Paul Rabil, at the CNBC Boardroom Game Plan: The Ownership Game Panel, July 25, 2023.

Jesse Grant | CNBC

The Premier Lacrosse League wants to begin selling its teams to individual owners or groups by 2028 "or soon thereafter," league co-founder Paul Rabil told CNBC.

In the next decade, Rabil said, he wants the league to expand from eight teams to as many as 16, with each franchise owned independently, similar to other U.S. professional leagues. The PLL is in its eighth season, and currently the league, itself, owns the teams.

Rabil, 40, is perhaps the most famous American lacrosse player in history, playing Major League Lacrosse from 2008 to 2018 before co-founding the PLL with his brother, Mike. The PLL merged with MLL in 2020.

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The PLL is one of a number of emerging sports leagues, along with League One Volleyball, the Professional Women's Hockey League and the Basketball Africa League, that have begun with a single-entity ownership model.

League One Volleyball has recently begun selling off teams to interested owners who pay expansion fees to take control of franchises. The BAL is beginning that process now, NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum told CNBC Sport last month.

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The demand to own sports teams has skyrocketed in recent years as valuations for the biggest sports — the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL — have soared. The spike in team valuations for the so-called Big Four U.S. sports leagues has pushed a class of investors toward more affordable teams in Major League Soccer, the National Women's Soccer League and the WNBA.

Emerging sports leagues like the PLL are seeking to prove they can join this mezzanine class of leagues that can garner team valuations in the hundreds of millions or even close to a billion dollars.

Earlier this week, the PLL raised $100 million in a Series E funding round to grow the league. Rabil is banking on the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics to give exposure to the league and the sport. Lacrosse hasn't been a medal sport in the Summer Games for about 120 years but is returning in 2028.

"The first allotment of tickets sold out in 48 hours for lacrosse, so there's good hype building," Rabil said.

The PLL is backed by a combination of investor firms and wealthy individuals.

However, Rabil said, if a large private equity fund or a strategic company such as TKO Group, which owns World Wrestling Entertainment, Ultimate Fighting Championship and Professional Bull Riders, would like to acquire the league, "we would absolutely have those discussions."

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