Professional Lacrosse League Forms Partnership With Sports Betting Company

Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) announced on Tuesday that they signed a deal with a sports betting company. The league is a fairly new one that was founded by professional American lacrosse player Paul Rabil in July of 2019.

The league has seven teams, including Rabil’s Atlas Lacrosse Club. Rabil played on the lacrosse team at John Hopkins University, where he was a midfielder.

The PLL is the latest sports league to try their hand at sports betting. The PLL and sports betting provider Genius Sports just finished a multi-million dollar deal. Genius will be the official data and integrity partner for their foray into sports betting.

Genius has already formulated several lucrative deals with leagues that include the NBA, NCAA and FIBA. According to the terms of the deal, Genius will provide various sports betting providers in the US and other countries live betting data.

Genius also has partnerships with the English Premier League, the PGA and the LPGA Tours. Another component of this new partnership will involve Genius safeguarding the PLL by protecting its league against betting corruption-related issues.

Rabil Views The Sports Betting Partnership As A Major Accomplishment

Rabil sees the Genius partnership as a very major accomplishment, being that his league is only in year two. With the coronavirus causing a major disruption to his league, Rabil said, “We are trying to be as productive as possible during the shutdown.”

Rabil said the league just finished with their highly publicized 16-day quarantined tournament during the pandemic, which Rabil had an excellent reception. The Maryland native said, “the PLL fan experience just got better as a result of this partnership. We will come back even stronger with more tools.”

Traditional sports viewing has been down from earlier times, even before the pandemic shut sports down. A sports analyst from New Jersey, Robert Wallson, said “there are a lot of choices, tons of cable stations, live streaming events, Netflix, Hulu; there has been so much more competition in the last five years, it’s crazy.

“Every viewer is viewed as a diamond by everyone; it’s been very competitive to get viewers, no matter what content you’re providing.”

All sports leagues that have ventured into sports betting feel it’s a way to keep fans engaged, which is a very important factor.

PLL Has Hundreds Of Employees In Los Angeles, New York City

The PLL has two main offices located in New York City and Los Angeles, and one of their biggest partners is NBC Sports. When the league started in 2019, they started with six teams.

Those are Archers Lacrosse Club, Rabil’s Atlas Lacrosse Club, Chaos Lacrosse Club, Chrome Lacrosse Club, Redwoods Lacrosse Club, and Whipsnakes Lacrosse Club. This year the league brought in another team, Waterdogs Lacrosse Club.

The addition of the seventh team now allows for bye weeks for each of the teams during the regular season. The tournament for this year for the PLL has been scheduled for July 25 to Aug. 9.

According to officials at the PLL, the tournament will go forward as planned. The only thing that they aren’t certain of at this point is whether there will be fans in the stands. Tickets were pre-sold and are completely sold out.

A spokesperson for PLL said if the decision is made to play the tournament without fans, full refunds will be given to ticketholders. Sara Slane, who was formerly with The American Gaming Association, has been a paid consultant for the PLL since it was founded last summer. A.G. Burnett, a gaming attorney, is the league’s chief counsel.