A week after signing luxury car maker Lexus as a title auto sponsor, the Premier Lacrosse League and the newly launched Women’s Lacrosse League have reached a multiyear agreement to make U.S. Bank their official banking and wealth management partner.
PLL co-founder and president Paul Rabil said that the new partnership will help the two leagues grow professional lacrosse from a startup venture to a structured sports investment vehicle akin to the more mature Big Four in football, basketball, baseball and hockey.
“I think about our league being wholly owned, both the PLL and the WLL, and ways that a really strong and sophisticated banking partner can help us navigate the transformation of our league from a Tier 2 to a Tier 1 sport,” Rabil said in a phone interview.
U.S. Bank can help pro lacrosse evaluate single-entity ownership versus franchising, Rabil said, and also assist with a real estate portfolio that will include permanent headquarters for league operations.
“There will be a point in time where to reach enterprise value potential… you do that with a sophisticated banking partner.”
U.S. Bank, the trade name of U.S. Bancorp, is the fifth-largest commercial bank by assets in the country, totaling $659 billion as of March 31. As part of the lacrosse deal, the bank will also become the inaugural founding partner for the PLL’s California Redwoods and the WLL’s California Palms, the two teams based in San Diego.
The sport’s demographic also makes a national bank an ideal partner. Rabil pointed out that despite the affluent label that’s often used to describe the lacrosse audience, it’s a group that is as much concerned about having resources in the future as it is about having disposable income today.
“When you look at wealth management,” he said, “50% of our lacrosse fans are young families, and in that, they’re more likely than general pop to have a kid under 18 in the household. It’s not just about the affluence or the average household income or the average net worth, but they also look at the future.”
Rabil himself – a member of the U.S. Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Professional Lacrosse Hall of Fame – will be the latest sports figure to join Peyton Manning’s “Places” franchise with ESPN as he’ll host Rabil’s Places for ESPN+, debuting on June 4. The latest iteration of the franchise stars Stephanie McMahon, the former co-CEO and chairwoman of WWE, in Stephanie’s Places.
Rabil mentioned the influence McMahon and her husband, WWE’s chief content officer and former wrestler Paul “Triple H” Levesque, had on helping grow PLL as a sponsorship destination. (WWE is an investor in the league.)
“I remember Paul telling me a number of years ago before I started the PLL, that the sponsorship business isn’t about how many new partners you bring on, it’s about how well you retain them,” Rabil said. “And we retain our partners because we care meticulously about way that we on what we promise, and over-deliver so that that can lead us to the structure of the US Bank deal.”
PLL launched as a six-team league in 2019 before adding an expansion team in Philadelphia and absorbing the Boston Cannons from Major League Lacrosse in the 2021 merger with the now-defunct competitor. In addition to WWE, PLL’s investors include Joe Tsai, David Blitzer, Robert Kraft and Arctos Partners.
