(Photo Courtesy of PLL)

Premier League Lacrosse has put on three action-packed weekends of professional lacrosse. As the league heads into Week 4, I got a chance to catch up with PLL CEO and co-founder Mike Rabil to get his background as an entrepreneur, his thoughts on the journey so far, how he feels about attendance numbers and where he hopes to see the league one year from now.

Here is that conversation.

Kyle Devitte: You played football at Dartmouth. How did that affect your experience? How did it prepare you for life in business? Do you still love football?

Mike Rabil: Growing up, I always played basketball and lacrosse all the way through high school. And then my senior year — and this is certainly not for me to beat my chest or anything — I was an All-American [in lacrosse]. After committing to play football at Dartmouth, I spoke to coach [Rick] Sowell, who was the lacrosse coach there at the time. He wanted me to consider playing both sports, but I felt loyal to the Dartmouth football program and also the position I played in football — defensive tackle and nose guard — I was playing at 300 pounds, and I’d have to lose weight so that I could move quicker and keep up with college attackmen.

Do I still love football? I do love football, I love how football is different from a lot of sports, but there are some things that are analogous with lacrosse. The preparation with your teammates, the physicality, the idea that if everyone does their job well that the team will win, but if one person doesn’t, the team can lose. To me, that’s really similar to what we do at the PLL. My job is to worry about everyone else’s jobs, but if you do your job well and you execute well, and so does everyone else, we will have a great product.

All of the @PremierLacrosse announcements / outreach today have been humbling. We have a lot to do but the PLL Values set the North Star for our company. These are displayed in both offices and engrained in our company culture. pic.twitter.com/sAPifk8GXg — Michael A. Rabil (@MichaelRabil) February 12, 2019



KD: What are some of your other businesses and what was your day-to-day life like before PLL? How did that help you build the PLL with this intense start-up mentality?

MR: I am an entrepreneur. I think entrepreneurship is over-glamorized today — people think it’s this fun build-your-own-schedule do-whatever-you-want guaranteed-to-make-money thing, and that’s just not the case. It is grueling, it is hard work, you rarely have time for yourself. You sacrifice a lot of personal and social aspects of your life. But I’ve done it for the last 10 years.

I always wanted to do something that had some sort of altruistic vein to it. The first thing I did was build fitness centers in tertiary markets in blue-collar towns that didn’t have high-end or affordable fitness [amenities]. We would go to the towns, and I’ll never forget the feeling after the people in that town thanked us for bringing a new business to that town. So, I built out that fitness portfolio and then moved into the small-business rental space. And what we were discovering, as small-business owners ourselves, finding expansion capital or borrowing money to build the business, the only options for us were some predatory lenders. The application process is also incredibly antiquated. So, what we decided to do was build our own online lending business where the rates and the money we were lending was fair and affordable. We ended up selling that business to a company called Funding Circle, and I was there for four-and-a-half years where I oversaw sales, business development and partnerships. That experience of building a 100-person team and being a leader at that business took a lot of work. It’s very humbling and you learn that you have deficiencies and you have to get better and work around those. You learn to listen to feedback and you learn to manage people.

I’ve had other journalists say, “This must be a dream come true; you own a sports league” to me and I never even thought about it like that. I say, “I’m building a company.” That’s how I think about it all the time. The opportunity presented itself like — this is broken at the professional level. It’s not like anyone was being malicious, or they don’t want it to be successful. It was just the wrong strategy and, I believe, the wrong operating team. That was why I left Funding Circle and spent the better part of eight months of my own money and time flying to Boston and trying to work with the MLL to fix what they had done.

KD: You and Paul originally set out to purchase MLL before deciding to build the PLL. How did those discussions go, how close were you to a deal with them and how did you ultimately decide to go forward with creating the PLL?

MR: We tried to be as respectful as possible. And I mean we went through the channels that had the most leverage. So, taking Dave Gross out to lunch [when he was still the commissioner] and pitching him and structuring the deal to keep him as part of the new company moving forward. He was able to then set up meetings with [New Balance chairman] Jim Davis, who not only owned four [MLL] teams at the time but was the owner of the league [and Paul’s] sponsor. We thought that if we could get Jim on board, that everything would make sense. We went out and lined up equity capital, and they gave us a number that they thought would get it done. We weren’t able to consummate a deal based on the expectations that they had vs. what our strategic capital was willing to pay. And I also don’t think that they took us seriously enough. We ended up going our separate ways, and Paul and I still had this vigor and this team of people that believe in us and wanted to be involved in building a new league, so that’s what we set out to do.

Before we officially launched in October to the public, in July we actually went back and sat down with them. At that point they had hired Sandy Brown and again there was no movement [on a deal]. We said that we would be willing to revisit numbers on a new proposal, but you never put any hard number down in front of us; never followed up with us. So it was a combination of their valuation and, probably, their disbelief in our ability to launch [the PLL].

There were a couple of other owners who reached out and that we sat down with. They wanted to figure something out, but it was more of a “Hey, Mike you and Paul could come run LSN.” or “Come build the youth initiative that we want to build.” So, it was never really a serious consideration for them. I believe there is something to be had in the future, but right now we can’t dedicate any time [to that] because we are so focused on building the PLL.

KD: What is the biggest obstacle you have encountered with PLL in 2019? What was the most intense discussion that you had leading up to the first PLL game?

MR: Those are two different sorts of questions. I think that some of the most intense conversations were trying to work with the MLL. Our whole initiative from the beginning was to bring the lacrosse community together. We thought the best way to do that was with new ownership or a new executive TV strategy with a fresh look using our media chops and our sales chops to buy into the business. That was always the intent. But now you see people who are bifurcated. A lot of those folks are angry at the change we are bringing. A lot of those people are angry at us trying to unlock the upside of professional lacrosse and do, what we believe, is the right thing to grow the game. We think that there is so much more upside for this sport and everyone should be a part of it. This isn’t about locking people out; it’s about bringing everyone together — that’s our whole business model: to be inclusive.

Going back to your question, those are the hardest conversations — trying to convince the most intense people that have done something the same way for 19 years that two brothers, who are significantly younger than them, can come in and create something that is more successful.

There are so many micro-challenges all the time, but everything is going really well. I think the one big thing that I need to figure out is how to work with the club lacrosse space. Paul and I never played club lacrosse; we couldn’t afford it. Nor was it even on my parents’ radar — our lacrosse sticks were handed to us from a family in our neighborhood that had stopped playing lacrosse. We always played rec lacrosse, and our rec program doesn’t even exist anymore. I think club lacrosse can be big and can be ostracizing to those people that can’t afford it. So, l think that’s where we really want to grow the game and that only happens if we raise the profile of the sport. With our partnership with NBC — broadcasting the game to markets that have never had that opportunity so people can see the best players in the world — hopefully helps lower the barrier to entry. We need to encourage the next generation to play the sports they want. The biggest challenge to us is to not threaten the club space, but to work with them.

KD: It’s pretty clear that you’re really prioritizing the social media and video aspect of the PLL. Which is great because you’ve got amazing highlights, vlogs and behind the scenes access. One of the things that you don’t have — though it has improved — is infallibly accurate stats. You hired SMT, the company that is responsible for first down lines in the NFL but has never done lacrosse — as your stat team. Before the season you touted stats as a huge part of how PLL will be a next-generation league. What are some of the challenges of working with the more traditional aspects of a sports league like stats and ops?

MR: The biggest scorecard criteria for us picking a stats provider is that they need to have the software to integrate during the broadcast. There’s only a handful — really just two — that can do that. We are working with SMT and, as you said, they haven’t really covered professional lacrosse in the way or depth that we planned to build our stat platform around. That being said, our stat software isn’t even where it will be at the end of this season. We are starting to deploy more resources there and improve upon what we have already put out there.

Dovetailing into the social aspect, it’s a big part of what we are doing. We have to bring stats into the social conversation in a more meaningful way. It not only allows fundamental lacrosse fans an insight into the performances of players, but it also allows for future revenue streams with gaming opportunities. People pay attention to stats in a more meaningful way as gaming and gambling become more legalized.

KD: Obviously, it’s hard for anyone to sell tickets to live events, much less a completely new sports league. You didn’t even have a year to prep for the launch of the league, so I can see how this is not a fair question, but your attendance numbers have not been as stellar as your social media successes through the first three weeks. How are you going to improve the numbers at each venue as the season goes on?

MR: We’re actually pretty happy with our attendance numbers. I know that people like to point a finger at that and say, “These numbers are terrible.” But, we are actually really excited about our numbers. If you look at where outdoor professional lacrosse has been, in our first year we are already out-kicking those numbers. Obviously, we want to continue to build, and we need to condition the market to attend professional lacrosse games in the summer. That’s what we are in the process of doing. As we visit these markets and we are deciding if we should come back to them, a lot of that hinges upon us making sure that we are going through the proper grassroots channels. There’s a lot of things that go into ticket sales and we call it a “white-knuckle business” because it’s one of those things where you need to buckle down and make sure you’re applying as many smart resources as you can, be really strategic about it and find what markets are more receptive to the PLL. Chicago, for example, performed better than New York, but if you look at demographics, there are far more people playing lacrosse in the Tri-State area than the Chicagoland area. They were excited about us bringing pro lacrosse to their market and they showed up for it and sat in the rain. These are the types of things that will be impacting how we think about year two and year three.

It’s been 8 months since we announced the @PremierLacrosse and we’re now 3 weeks into our inaugural season. The play is fierce. The spirit is contagious. Your feedback and encouragement in viewership and attendance have been humbling and motivating. We’re building this with you. pic.twitter.com/BFLC4XzKBX — Paul Rabil (@PaulRabil) June 17, 2019

KD: You’ve gotten amazing coverage from your media partners at NBC, and as we said before the social media reach is groundbreaking for lacrosse. However, there seems to be a lack of traditional sports media covering PLL week to week. How do you get more sports media to cover the PLL this summer?

MR: I think it’s one of those things where we are in continuing conversations with affiliates of local stations with NBC and some of the affiliations that they have like local papers. We are actually talking about how we can become part of the sports section in those papers because right now there are few mentions at all. If you look at somewhere like the San Diego Tribune, we are not going to play in San Diego, but we should be in their coverage of pro lacrosse and what’s on TV. So, how do you have those conversations? Our media team and our marketing team are starting to work and develop that as part of their strategy. It’s hand-to-hand combat, developing relationships with these newsmakers, and it takes a village. It’s people coming together and saying, “Hey, this should be covered at a more national level.” If this sport is going to grow and unlock the opportunity for all of us that are involved, then we have to bring new fans to it. We are seeing empirical data where people are coming to our games and getting hooked. They’re going to NBC Sports Gold and watching replays, and then they’re going to our social and that’s making them feel like they’re under the helmet and part of that team. So, some of the conversations now are turning into, “I’m having a hard time picking which team I am into — am I an Archers fan or am I an Atlas fan? I’m going to see how the season unfolds and I’m going to pick my team.”

How do we get on SportsCenter? Well, we have been on SportsCenter once and that has encouraged our athletes to be creative and to take risks so those networks will be left with no choice but to put plays in their top 10, just like that Connor Fields shot a few weeks ago.



KD: When you announced all of the players that would be playing in the PLL this summer, they had not been sorted into the teams that they are now on. I think a lot of people want to know how the PLL teams created behind the scenes — what can you tell me about that process? What sort of metrics did you use to create the squads?

MR: That process was guided by our lacrosse advisory board and the metrics that we asked them to use when they were sorting the teams were: individual skill level, past performance in pro lacrosse and how they work in the locker room. Using those key metrics, they were able to put together rosters that we felt were pretty comparable with one another. You’re starting to see that, the majority of our games have gone to overtime. While the Chrome Lacrosse club is 0-3, they have lost all of their games by only one goal. So we feel really good about the parity which makes for a better product on the field. The players know each week that they cannot let up one inch because there is no easy win in this league and that’s where we need to be. We need to raise the bar so that guys are fighting and clawing to stay on a roster to keep performing at a high level, and they’re all incentivized to do that.

KD: We are talking at the conclusion of Week 3 of PLL. What grade would you give to the company at this point, and separately, how would you grade yourself?

MR: Our business is always going to strive for improvement. We have a post-weekend survey that goes out to every single person that attended our games and we ask them for critical feedback and 20 other individual questions. And then we have a two-hour call every Wednesday where we go through every single piece of feedback. We make sure we go over the positive, and 90% of it has been positive, but that 10% we really try to zero in on and see how we can improve and fix week to week. My team’s performance, the people that I work with is a solid “A.” They can get better and become an “A+,” but they have been tireless. Working through the weekends, long into the night and it’s just been so impressive. I feel lucky to come to work every day with the people we have at this company.

I put myself at… a “B.” I think for me, I need to continue to focus on the things that are going to build this business for the next five years. Sometimes I get bogged down with the day-to-day operations. While that’s very important, and I need to have my thumb on it, I also need to be pulling my head out and seeing the forest through the trees and focusing more on the next five years. I feel good about what we have done, there is a ton more to do. I’m going to be overly critical of my own performance, but I think that’s what makes me a good operator.

KD: Let’s say we have this same conversation one year from now. What is the one thing that you want to be able to say about the PLL that you can’t say now?

MR: One year is tough because I tend to think in two-year increments. I think for me, we are really hitting our metrics across the board for our shareholders and I feel really excited about that — everything from sponsorships, ticket sales, merchandise, digital subscription numbers, impressions, interactions and views; we’re really knocking the cover off the ball. A year from now, what I am excited to see is the variety of sponsors that will start to enter into professional lacrosse. What we have already seen at the PLL is brands that have never spent in a meaningful way are already spending. Companies like adidas, Capital One, and we are getting ready to announce another one. There are several conversations with brands that have never spent in professional lacrosse before that are starting to lick their chops and be a part of what we’re doing in a meaningful way. A year from now, I’ll be excited to roll out a whole new variety of brand partners.