Lacrosse League Replaces Season With Two-Week Quarantine Event

(Bloomberg) -- The upstart Premier Lacrosse League will hold a fan-free, fully quarantined two-week tournament in lieu of its second season, testing whether the sport can bounce back from the coronavirus lockdown.

The league's seven teams will all converge at the end of July for the event, in a location yet to be finalized. Players will come in for the entire period and adhere to mandatory quarantine restrictions, with all 20 games broadcast or streamed live through NBC Sports.

It's the PLL's answer to the question looming over every major sports league: How do we resume games for our athletes, fans, sponsors and media partners in a safe way during the pandemic?

“There's pent-up demand for live sports, and pent-up demand for lacrosse especially, with college lacrosse being canceled early and youth clubs not being able to play,” said PLL co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mike Rabil. “We think having lacrosse on television for 15 days straight is something that people will get excited about.”

The tournament allows the league to hold an abbreviated sophomore season, and preserves its most important revenue stream: sponsorships. With the recent addition of Ticketmaster and Utz Quality Foods, and the expansion of some current deals, sponsorship revenue will jump by 2.5 times this year, Rabil said. The league will satisfy those deals with more ad space -- on-field logos, more advertising during broadcasts -- and through the digital and social media work that the PLL does outside of games.

“Yes, this tournament does fulfill the sponsorship obligations that we've promised in a normal season, because we are going to oversubscribe our partners with assets that weren't part of their contracts,” Rabil said.

The PLL was launched last year by Rabil and his brother Paul, the sport's best-known player. Investors in the league include Joe Tsai, Creative Artists Agency and Raine Group.

While bigger leagues like the NHL and NBA are also exploring the possibility of resuming their seasons in a single location, the PLL's structure lets it be more nimble. It has fewer teams, and therefore less personnel to test, corral and monitor. It's also a tour-based model, so there are no home stadiums, and the league owns all the teams, which streamlines the decision-making process.

There are disadvantages as well. The PLL doesn't make a large chunk of money from media rights, so simply holding events in empty venues isn't an easy stopgap. In its first year, PLL sponsors were its biggest revenue driver -- followed by merchandise, then ticket sales. This year, tickets were on track to be second.

The group is considering a few different locations, all of which are places the league could have to itself, with fields, athletic facilities and some sort of housing. It has created a medical advisory board that will help make decisions on how players should travel to the location, how long in advance they need to quarantine and what testing might look like on the ground.

As for the athletes themselves, they'll be allowed to opt out if they don't want to participate. Those that do play will be paid a pro rated amount of their original 2020 salary. Depending on how many games they play, that could be around 50% of the full season amount.