Paul Rabil, at CNBC Boardroom Game Plan: The Ownership Game Panel, July 25, 2023.
Jesse Grant | CNBC
The Premier Lacrosse League wants to start selling its teams to individual owners or groups by 2028 “or shortly thereafter,” league co-founder Paul Rabil told CNBC.
Over the next decade, Rabil said he wants the league to grow from eight teams to 16 teams, with each franchise independently owned, like 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 in Major League Lacrosse from 2008 to 2018 before co-founding the PLL with his brother Mike. The PLL merged with the MLL in 2020.
The PLL is one of several emerging sports leagues, along with League One Volleyball, the Professional Women’s Hockey League and the Basketball Africa League, that began with a single-entity ownership model.
League One Volleyball recently began selling teams to interested owners who pay expansion fees to gain control of the franchises. The BAL is starting that process now, NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum told CNBC Sport last month.
The demand for owning sports teams has soared in recent years as the valuations of the biggest sports – the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL – have soared. Rising valuations of teams in the four major U.S. sports leagues have pushed an investor class toward more affordable teams in Major League Soccer, the National Women’s Soccer League and the WNBA.
Emerging sports leagues like the PLL are looking to prove they can join this mezzanine class of leagues that can generate 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 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 to give visibility to the league and the sport. Lacrosse hasn’t been a medal sport at the Summer Games for about 120 years, but it will return in 2028.
“The first batch of lacrosse tickets sold out in 48 hours, so there’s some good hype,” Rabil said.
PLL is backed by a combination of investors and high net worth individuals.
However, Rabil said that if a large private equity fund or 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.”