The 2026 Premier Lacrosse League season begins on May 8 in Salt Lake City. Currently, all eight teams in the pro men’s lacrosse league, as well as the four teams in the recently launched Women’s Lacrosse League, are owned by the PLL itself. But that’s not the long-term plan.
The PLL will eventually move to a model with individual team owners, league founder and president Paul Rabil said on a recent episode of Portfolio Players. Rabil told Front Office Sports that team ownership was a prerequisite for becoming a top five North American sports league.
“I think the right ones are force multipliers. They create more value in some cases than the league does,” Rabil said. He pointed to NFL owners Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft, who’ve done “amazing things,” as well as Angel City FC and Inter Miami, as models for effective ownership.
Alongside brother Mike, Rabil launched the PLL in 2019 as a competitor to Major League Lacrosse, which had multiple franchise owners before switching to a single-entity league in January 2020 and merging with the PLL that December.
Rabil said the PLL is now set up for broader success by introducing team owners: “When we do sell teams, we will be in a better position than had we done it formerly.”
Currently, the league has a touring model; even though each team is attached to a city, competition rotates through different stops across a 12 weekend regular season, plus a midseason All-Star event.
Rabil believes that in order to attract team owners, the league will need to eventually move away from touring and find permanent home venues, as “you’re not going to want to come in and buy a team and only get one or two game weekends.” This way, the franchises can maximize revenue from tickets, merchandise, and sponsorships.
Rabil also noted that a single-entity model can eventually become problematic, citing the MLS, where Phil Anschutz owned as many as six teams at once in the early 2000s.
“That’s a conflict of interest,” Rabil said. “If you own several teams and you want to compete for an MLS cup, [you’ll] make some trades toward the end of the deadline and stack your one team.”
The National Lacrosse League, the North American box lacrosse league in which several PLL players also compete, operates under multiple team owners.
Rabil noted the value and massive return on investment an owner or group can get from owning a team—especially winning ones. He pointed to the Denver Nuggets, which were sold for $65 million in 1985 and last bought in July 2000 alongside the Colorado Avalanche for $450 million.
“You talk about how valuable sports leagues and teams are but you really have to win,” Rabil said. “The economics historically are so favorable when the team’s winning from ticket sales to sponsorship viewership, etcetera.”
