The Premier Lacrosse League Announces Championship Series

By: Kolby Castillo

Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash

The Premier Lacrosse League was formed in 2018 by lacrosse superstar Mike Rabil, his brother, Paul Rabil, and it is backed by many investors. The league premiered in June 2019 with a 14 week season that concluded with the playoffs and the PLL Championship game. The seven teams in the league are the: Archers, Atlas, Chaos, Chrome, Redwoods, Waterdogs, and Whipsnakes. Whipsnakes are the reigning champions from last season. Their second season was suppose to occur on May 29th. Like many of the other sports leagues, it was postponed. They found a solution for the the 2020 season amidst everything going on. 

The Premier Lacrosse League powered by Ticket Master is leading the pack with the announcement they made May 6, 2020 of the Championship Series. It will be a two week tournament from July 25th to August 9th. In the Announcing of the League State of the series video co-founder Paul Rabil says, "It is fully quarantined, we are rolling out a robust medical protocol that is led by a Covid-19 medical committee. You can only accomplish this in a fully quarantined model which we've done by taking over an entire location for the championship series." The leagues seven teams will compete in a 14 game group play tournament format. That will determine the seeding of each team for the single elimination tournament that follows the week after. NBC will be broadcasting the games for people to watch from home. A total of 20 games over just 15 days will be shown over the family network of NBC. It will be interesting to see the viewership numbers of the PLL's championship series. With not many live sports going on, this may spark the fan interest of everyone across the world. It could be the beginning rise of popularity for the sport of Lacrosse.
 
Many of the sports leagues are trying to figure out a way to continue their season. Could this model be what many of the other leagues follow? Imagine a NFL Championship series where they followed this type of tournament  format. Would you tune in? I definitely would.