On a warm June evening, brothers Mike and Paul Rabil walked the red carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival. They were there for the premier of their documentary, Fate Of A Sport. The cameras snapped, reporters asked questions, and the guys looked great. (Whoever their tailor is, they deserve a bonus.) They stood shoulder to shoulder with Hollywood icon Andy Garcia and shook hands with Robert DeNiro. This all begs the question—how did two brothers from Montgomery Village, Maryland, end up running a sports league, making feature films and hobnobbing with movie stars? The answer is simple: one game at a time.
In 2018, the Rabil brothers launched the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) as a competitor to Major League Lacrosse (MLL). Lacrosse, the oldest team sport on our continent, given to the Haudenosaunee people over a thousand years ago, had been growing at the youth, high school, and collegiate levels year-over-year while staying stagnant at the pro level.
“It was one of those opportunities where we looked at the game, looked at the growth at the youth, high school and collegiate levels—both from the men's and women's side—and we thought, ‘there's an opportunity for this at the professional level,’” Mike told us, as we walked the field at Hofstra’s Shuart Stadium, an hour before the stands would fill up with shouting fans. “Nationally, participation is up 220% over the last 20 years across the board.”
Mike and Paul saw the numbers, had the passion and grabbed the opportunity. Before you knew it, the Premier Lacrosse League was born. In 2020, conscious of the path that was paved by the Major Lacrosse League, the PLL and MLL merged and expanded to an 8th team.
The Rabil brothers know that if you’re going to be successful, you have to surround yourself with the right people. And of course, that means finding the right partners. That’s where two other brothers (and company co-founders) joined the conversation.
“I think the reason Shep & Ian took a meeting with us was we were a company started by brothers. That got them to say ‘Okay, we'll hear them out.’ And they understood building a business with their bare hands, and being two brothers doing it. So, getting that meeting back in 2018 was important,” Mike said, speaking of the League’s partnership with vineyard vines, the official style of the PLL. “Also, we're a league that prides itself on quality. And when you wear vineyard vines, the quality is undeniable. So I think all of that has led to the partnership being successful.”
Paul is the flashy one—debonair good looks, high-profile relationships and a list of accolades and achievements in the sport that is practically unrivaled. Mike is quieter, running operations off the field. “Paul and I played lacrosse growing up in Maryland, and we ended up falling in love with the game,” Mike told us. “Paul obviously had a storied career. I just kind of grew wide, so I was a better fit for football, but I think lacrosse is a sport that is beautiful to watch, beautiful to play.” Between the two of them, they were the perfect package. (And while he might undersell it, Mike is no slouch in the athleticism department—he was the captain of the Dartmouth football team.)
“I think anyone that has a sibling, there are times where you want to hang up the phone or throw the phone at them. And I think more times than not, Paul wants to throw the phone at me. And rightfully so,” Mike said with a laugh. “But starting and running a business is really, really difficult. No matter if it's a big company or a small company, the earlier stages are incredibly hard.”
Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of meeting the Rabils knows that one thing is for sure—difficult or not, once they set their mind to something, it’s going to get done.
“At the earlier stages of a business, it doesn't matter how good of a salesperson you are, how great of an ops person you are or how great of a designer you are. If you're not working well within the system that's designed with everyone else, nothing gets done, because it's so cross-functional. Particularly in a sports league. And so, I think that really comes to life in lacrosse, and that's the beauty of it,” Mike said. “It's truly a team game. And I think that the teams that really excel in the PLL don't care about who scores the most. They just care about playing within the system and winning together. And I think that translates into business.”
But it takes more than charm, good looks and talent to launch a sports league, let alone a successful one. “We have a value called ‘be helpful.’ And that is a mindset that we have for everyone—our customers, our fans, the media, our investors and especially our players. We need to be helpful all the time. They're all the same, they're all equal, but we really focus on trying to be helpful for our players. And that folds back into, ‘why do we keep doing this? Why do we have such motivation year over year? What keeps us going?’ And it's really elevating that experience,” Mike said. “And hopefully everyone involved looks back 30 years from now and can say, ‘I was at the foundation of the PLL.’ A big difference between the PLL and other leagues is that our players are shareholders. They all own a part of this.”
When you’re starting a sports league, there are two options—you bring the sport to the fans, or you bring the fans to the sport. For Mike and Paul, they chose the former. “When we started, the initial thought was to lower the barrier to entry and make the sport approachable for more people. We also looked at our demographic, which is young and tech savvy. And we said, ‘Okay, if you're young and tech savvy with social media, you are likely to be following players rather than maybe the teams or the league they play in.’ And so, our thesis was, how do we make this a very player-focused league? How do we make this approachable? Let people pick a team based on the brand, their performance and the players. When you centralize everything around a geographic location, at the beginning especially, it can be exclusionary.”
“We started with six teams. Now we have eight. And for the first year, we were in 11 or 12 different markets. If we had a geographic home and away model, as opposed to our team-focused model, we would've only been in six markets. So we were able to be at 100% of our markets the first year. Getting that scale matters a lot,” Mike said. “I think over time, geos do help. And there is a segment of new lacrosse fans that we're thinking about capturing with a geo approach and a strategy that can bring them in and compel them to root for a local team.”
As the stands filled and the players took the field for their warmups, and Mike got ready to go into game-mode, we got a chance to talk about what really matters—the love of the sport. “After our championship game, when the players are celebrating their win and accepting their trophy, and everyone on the PLL staff has been grinding through the season and working so hard, we all get a moment to reflect and congratulate each other on the work. And I think that's the best moment for me. I think that moment to acknowledge the work that we did, and see how happy the players and the fans are, and some of our sponsors are on the field with us and the press. That's what is really special to me.”