The greatest entrepreneurial adventures take a lot of sleepless nights, a bias for action and a commitment to people. Starting a professional sports league is no different.
As we gear up for the first ever Stars and Stripes Classic, Fran Racioppi is joined by Mike Rabil, the co-founder of the Premier Lacrosse League. Mike and his brother Paul, started the league with a vision to put the players at the center of the business model.
From better pay, to open marketing, to benefits and equity in the league, they’re redefining how professional sports embraces their athletes.
Mike shared the market opportunity he and Paul saw in lacrosse and how they relentlessly pursued investment and support. He explained how giving players equity, access to marketing content and a seat at the table have created a more inclusive league. And he showed us where the sport is headed with regional affiliation.
They also previewed the Stars and Stripes Classic coming September 2 to Gillette Stadium where the bonds between lacrosse and Special Operations will face off for the very first time.
Take a listen, watch, or read our conversation with the business mind behind the PLL, then head over to our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast platform to catch all the action from the Stars and Stripes Classic.
Don’t forget to go to Green Beret Foundation to join our 18 Series Match Challenge to support our team as the Snakeeaters take on the Frogmen.
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Mike, welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast.
I am very honored to be selected to be here. Thank you for being at PLL Connecticut.
Thanks for having us. We set this thing up. Danny, Grace, and the team brought us in. We’re part of the Green Beret Foundation. We have the Stars & Stripes Classic inaugural event, which is a brainchild of yourself which we’re going to talk about in a couple of minutes. They said, “We want you to come out to Fairfield.” I live down the street. I live in New Canaan. They said, “We’ll do some pre-episodes. It will be awesome,” and that you’re going to be in the fan experience center.
It’s only right for the official show of the Green Berets to be in the middle of what we’re doing here at the PLL. Congratulations on your success. I heard that you had Andy Towers on three times.
Andy Towers is the only one who has been on the show three times.
He must be that electric.
Two hundred episodes. He’s the only one.
Why is that? Is he that good?
When you hear Andy Tower speak, and we talk about leadership on this show and building great organizations, you don’t even know what he said. You jump up and you’re like, “I got to run through a wall. Someone give me a wall because I’m running.”
That says a lot for a former Green Beret to say that about Towers. There must be something special about him for a Green Beret to say that.
He’s an influential guy. We love Andy. We’re getting to meet so much more of the team here. This was your vision. Your vision back in 2018 was whether you can create a professional lacrosse organization that’s going to have children out here with lacrosse sticks who are looking at their idols one day like everybody did for the NFL and Major League Baseball and say, “I’m going to be on that field one day.” Talk about the vision back in 2018 and the trajectory of the PLL over the last couple of years.
I’ll be honest. It doesn’t really take that much vision. It took a lot of effrontery. The youth was already there, both the men’s and women’s side. College lacrosse has been booming on the men’s and women’s sides. Frankly, pro lacrosse had been pioneered for twenty years. There was this conditioning of the market. We thought they took the wrong strategy and needed to pay the players more. The idea was like, “This market is ripe.”
It’s very similar to the NFL. At the start of the AFL, back in the ‘50s, they saw college football booming. There wasn’t youth participation, but we saw college lacrosse booming and there were tons of youth participation. The macro factors were there. It took a lot of belief in our ability to execute, which is hard. A lot of people didn’t join. We’re still executing that belief and that vision. It wasn’t some incredible visionary task. The path was laid. We had the energy and the belief that we could go do it.
Credit to the people who came before us, truly, that built pro lacrosse. A lot of MLL owners laid the foundation for us. Some of them have joined us as investors. Also, credit to the players who have been playing professionally for the last couple of years. A lot of those guys have equity in the PLL. We’re honoring them with our pro lacrosse history. I’m not deflecting to be humble. It’s the truth. We’re trying to execute that strategy.
Your experience is in building businesses. You come from the investment world. You come from the VC. When you think, “I’m going to start a professional sports league,” and then you have to go out and find investors to do that, what’s that conversation?
It’s interesting you say that because I’ve been talking a lot about this. People are starting more and more sports leagues. When Paul and I were doing it, it wasn’t a concept. Pro sports is starting to become an arm of Wall Street. Private equity funds are being raised specifically to invest in sports assets. I try to follow history a lot. It reminds me of real estate in the ‘60s and ‘60s. It wasn’t an asset class for Wall Street. There are REITs. People are investing in commercial real estate to get returns.
If you look at sports, sports used to be for the billionaires. You couldn’t get access. It’s democratized. You have more access points. Funds are being raised. You can be an LP in those funds that invest in a pro sports team. The NFL is likely going to let private equity in. All the other big sports leagues in the US have. We were one of the first to think about how we could raise private capital. We think that there’s a lot of IP, content, and media value in owning it all from the league to all the teams. Do you guys want to be a part of a growing sport where it’s been conditioned in the market?
What happens is you fast forward 7 or 8 years and all these other leagues are trying to start up and they want to talk to me And Paul. I always get caught in this weird space where I want to be helpful as an entrepreneur, but I’m also like, “I slept on a lot of hotel floors, cried, and bled a lot. No one showed me the path. I’ll give you fifteen minutes, but that’s about it.” It’s competitive. There’s only so much sponsorship that goes around. There are only so many media rights. There’s only so much inventory. The game that’s coming up is going to be on ABC. You have to fight hard to keep those slots to get people to view. It is competitive. People ask us who our competitors are. I say all the other sports.
There are only so much media rights for every sport out there. You have to fight hard to keep to slots and get more viewers for them.
You talked about owning all aspects of it. One of the unique factors of the PLL is the marketing piece and the fact that you guys have been open and transparent with the marketing piece. You control all aspects of the marketing team, but you’ve also made all those marketing resources available to the players. Unlike the NFL where the NFL owns everything and it’s like, “You can’t use a picture. You can’t do this,” you’ve opened that up. Why is the marketing piece being controlled but also open so important to the model?
The value is really the players. The players drive value. They’re the ones who are creating what people are talking about and why people are watching. If they don’t have access to their own IP coupled with our IP, then they’re not going to be able to market as efficiently to an audience. What we’ve tried to do is say, “When you’re marketing yourself, take our IP and push it out, especially to your channels.
At the same time, we’ll package it for you. We’ll cut highlights. We’ll give you access points to it. We’ll cut photos of you from professional photographers so it looks premium and package it.” As soon as the game’s over, it’s sitting there in a digital file for them so they can upload it to social. Our social teams have even gotten so active that we’ll put a copy together for them.
We know that with social media, there’s a one-to-one audience, their audience. Ultimately, we want them to be communicating as much as they want to, but we want to do the heavy lifting for them. We want them to focus on being the best athletes they can, playing the best game that they can. If they want to utilize social media to have a conversation, we want them to be able to leverage our IP. We want to package it for them. All they have to do is press play.
The players drive value. They are the ones who create what people are talking about and why they are watching a particular sport.
You guys do such a good job with that on social media. I watch it every day and I try to take tips to incorporate stuff.
You’re a long-pole defender.
I was.
You were good at hitting people across. You said you had a couple of concussions. Hopefully, you’re good. I did my research. I know about you.
That’s exactly it. I was a football player. That’s how we built the team.
I did the same thing. Football and long pole.
They said, “We don’t have a team. We want to build a team. If you play offensive line and you are remotely faster than others, you are going to play long pole defenses. Hit guys when they come through the crease.” That was the only job I had. It was like, “Don’t touch the ball. Hit guys when they come through the crease.”
These guys are so fast. It’s hard to hit them. They dodge. It’s crazy.
Over the last few years of the PLL, you had a couple of things that were in play. You didn’t have a regional affiliation for the teams. You played in neutral venues. Going into year six, this 2024 season, that has advanced. You have regional affiliation and are getting into more of a home game or away game-type concept. I know that might be out there in the future as well. You’re defined. You have two neutral sites. Why make that shift?
Looking at the history of sports, we are trying to study the best sports properties in the world. The common tongue of sports is, “Where are you from? I root for my local team.” For us to launch with only 6 teams and then 8, we didn’t want to be overly regionalized. We wanted this tour model to allow us to spread the country.
In a traditional home-and-away model, you could only do it with 6 teams being 6 markets. We’re able to get to 15 out of year 1. As we saw the information and the data that we were collecting, 40% of the fans were rooting for the league as opposed to their teams. It should be 2%. We’re like, “We did a really good job building this league brand, but we need more people to be stickier to teams. Let’s not try to be overly innovative here. Let’s try to look at the data. Let’s go back to the common language of traditional sports teams and where their immediate and best fan funnel is.” That’s often local fans.
We were like, “How do we thread the needle and do something where we can still keep the flavors of our tour model?” It’s super efficient with our capital. It’s really great for fans. We’re on a neutral site. We get to come to Connecticut, and these fans are incredible, but we can still have a home-and-away model that’s combined with our tour-based model. It allowed for this interesting opportunity for us to still access local but then be tour and be efficient with what we’re doing.
We had Coach Nat St. Laurent on. I asked him the same question. You’re changing a bit of the way the game is played. There’s the two-point shot. Whose idea was the two-point shot? Why is it important?
It wasn’t ours. That was before the MLL. The MLL, truly, those guys laid the foundation down. There are guys like the Founder of New Balance, Jim Davis, and Jake Steinfeld. There are guys who invested heavily into Rob Hale, the Cannons, Chesapeake Bay Hawks ownership, and the Denver Outlaws that we brought back. Those guys built pro lacrosse before. They’re the ones who thought of the two-pointer. The two-point mark allows more parity, allows for more competition, and allows for teams to show the athleticism and skill of these guys. We brought that forward. We made a lot of tweaks, but that was theirs. No credit to us on that.
I want to ask about some of the league development. You got the draft. There’s a salary cap for the teams. There are minimum salaries and instituted agencies. We’ve got training camps. You’re whittling down from training camp into the 25-man roster and a 21-man active roster with multi-year contracts. When we look at professionalism and professionalizing the actual operation of the business for the team, it’s becoming to a greater degree every year.
How do you continue to recruit these guys out here, the highest caliber talent? You talked about the competition that you have with other sports for the resources. You’re also competing for players. There are players who are looking at the NFL going, “I can make $55 million a year like Joe Burrow,” but the whole team and the PLL only have $735,000 for the year. How do you still bring in the best guys?
It’s higher than that, but that’s good research. We’re closer to $1 million. For us, the way we think about it is, “I’m going to walk out of here. I’m going to go and spend the rest of my day talking to our current sponsors and potential sponsors.” The reason I’m doing that is to drive more revenue to the league. The more revenue we drive to the league, the more we can pay players.
What we always tell people is that Paul, me, and our team, and we have one of the best operating teams in sports, are laser-focused on driving viewership and revenue. The more we’re able to drive viewership, the more people will pay attention and watch, the more revenue we’ll capture, and the more the guys are going to make money. We know that we need to continue to pay the players more. We’re already up 5.5x or 6x from where they were at the MLL but we got to keep pushing.
What we say is these are the early days. It’s the early days of the NFL. The difference is our players all have equity. Each time these guys step on the field, they get five stock options. I guarantee you that those offensive and defensive linemen of the NFL in the ‘50s and ‘60s wish they had some stock options in the NFL. Those guys weren’t getting paid millions right away. You have to build it. That’s what Paul and I are here to do. We’re here to build this thing. For us, that’s what I think about.
We also open up access points. We have our PLL Play business, which is our youth business. That’s a huge access point for where we take the best players in the world. When they’re not playing for the PLL, we have them coaching, working with the next generation of youth, and also making a lot more money. We incorporate our players into brand deals. We bring in Gatorade as a sponsor. We bring Whirlpool as a sponsor. We package ambassadorships with our players into those deals. They’re making money on those deals in addition to the league and in addition to their player’s salaries.
We’re always thinking, “How do we pay our players more?” We have a marketing fund that’s on top of the salary caps that we pay players for their performance on the field. The more they do, the more they activate with us. It’s the biggest thing we think about. It’s astute of you to call that out. That’s what we’re thinking about. These are the early days, but we’re focused on the right things.
The two games are about to start. We’re going to get in there and watch them. There are so many big games in 2024, but I’m biased. I told you at the beginning that the highlight of the year is the Stars & Stripes Classic on September 2nd, 2024, at Gillette Stadium. On the Quarter Final weekend, it is Green Berets versus Navy SEALs. I know where my money’s at, but I’ll be supporting the Green Beret Foundation and the Navy SEAL Foundation. Why is this game so important to you and the PLL? Thank you so much for putting this together.
The lacrosse community is really tied into Special Forces. If you look at Navy SEALs and a lot of Green Berets, there are a lot of former guys who we’ll see playing, and some current guys have lacrosse backgrounds. There’s this deep interwoven connectivity to lacrosse and Special Forces. I was with Charlie. We were honoring the Green Beret Foundation at the semifinals at Gillette in 2023. I was talking to Charlie and was like, “We got to do something bigger.” We were brainstorming and came up with this idea. We were like, “All these Navy SEALs and Green Berets all play lacrosse. Why don’t we have these guys play each other?”
We put this together on a platform. We show the world the most badass lacrosse players and the most badass people who are protecting our country. We highlight them and give them a platform. As part of that, we’re donating money back to those foundations to help the future of both of those groups and what they do when they’re out of the service. I thought it was a great opportunity.
Charlie and Robin have been bulldogging this with us and their ability to help us launch this. Honestly, the crafts that Gillette is super behind this. We’re really excited to showcase this idea. We want to keep it going every single year. There’s a big gala. The night before, there’s a big dinner. We’re going to be raising money and driving money to the foundations. Our foundation, PLL Assists, is a part of it as well. We’re continuing to take PLL and PLL Assists and push this forward. We’re excited that guys like you are paying attention to it.
We’re going to be a part of every single piece of it.
I hope so.
You’re going to make a prediction?
No. I want to see a close game.
What you’re doing here with the PLL is amazing. You are right. We are tied so much in Special Forces back to lacrosse. I don’t think I would’ve been able to do the things I did in Special Forces or as a collegiate athlete in my rowing career if it hadn’t been for lacrosse. My daughter’s playing lacrosse at the high school level here in New Canaan, which is the epicenter. It’s so competitive. My son’s four, and he already has a stick in his hand. We have a long trajectory to go, but I’ve been following the league since you started it. Andy’s been on a few times. I look forward to having more folks on. We’ll have you back, too, because we’re going to have a lot to talk about it next time.
Thanks. I really appreciate it. Thanks for being here. This is a Saturday. This is your free time, but you guys are such a great show, the official podcast of the Green Berets. We’re fortunate to have guys like you paying attention. I appreciate you.
Thanks.
Thank you for your service, too.