Announcer:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years.
Announcer:
Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and six clearinghouses around the world. And now, welcome Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King, of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
What month is it? February? College spring break is next month. Time to get out my checkbook and send a donation to Swarthmore College men's lacrosse to help pay for some of the gas as the old team heads south in its Econoline vans for its annual trip up to warmer climes to gear up for the upcoming season. Okay. I'll age myself here. I recently had the honor of returning to Swat for the induction of our 1982 to '85 teams in the Garnet Athletics Hall of Fame.
Josh King:
Our legendary coach, Jim Noyes, Easy Chicken we called him, gathered us now old men to remember the years in which we won three Middle Atlantic Conference championships and punched the program's only ticket to the NCAA Division III tournament. Spoiler alert for those looking for the game on YouTube, we lost in the first round to Washington College. Those were the days when lax was just beginning to take hold, especially in the Northeast where I went to high school.
Josh King:
We heard the old stories, how Native Americans invented the game, how stellar athletes, like Jim Brown an NFL Hall of Famer, actually preferred lacrosse to football during his days at Syracuse. But we were still pioneers of sorts. For those who don't know lacrosse, know this, it's the fastest game on two feet and also the fastest-growing sport across America. It's a sport that combines the endurance of soccer, the eye-hand coordination of basketball and baseball, and the physical contact of football and hockey.
Josh King:
It's America's oldest sport, first played by tribesmen in the mid-1600s long before the signing of the Buttonwood Agreement, the founding document of the New York Stock Exchange in 1792. How big is the game now? Well, since 2012, lacrosse has seen a 35% spike in participation. While the game has modernized since its early origins, the goal remains very much the same, carry, pass, catch, and shoot the ball from your stick into the goal, score as many points as you can.
Josh King:
Our guest today knows the scene I described of heading south in vans for spring break and a week's worth of suicide sprints all too well, although he excelled on the premier level and continues to break new ground as a player and businessman as the wave of the sports popularity spreads across the nation and, indeed, the world. The lacrosse community has nicknamed Paul Rabil the LeBron James of lacrosse, and he's become the bearded face of the sport, not quite Julian Edelman, but you get the idea.
Josh King:
Sitting across from me at 6'4" is the legendary Mr. Rabil, founder and chief strategy officer of the Premier Lacrosse League. What brings him to Wall Street? We'll find out right after this.
Speaker 3:
The reception to our SOFR launch has been very, very strong. We've seen $70 billion worth of national trade so far. We've seen strong open interest, and we are achieving sufficient liquidity to attract a new set of customers to the SOFR market. It's our goal at ICE to create a more modern approach to product design, and we're creating more granular price points for our customers to achieve better execution and better liquidity.
Josh King:
Paul Rabil had a hand in winning two national lacrosse titles as part of the famed Johns Hopkins University squad in 2005 and 2007 and was the number one draft pick in the 2008 Major League Lacrosse draft. He's been a member of the 2010, '14, and '18 World Lacrosse Championship US Team, which won the championship last July. With a Rolodex that includes everyone from Bill Belichick to Steph Curry to Tony Robbins, Paul teamed up with his older brother, Mike, a former football player for Dartmouth, former Hopkins teammate, Kyle Harrison, and two-time Major League Lacrosse MVP, Tom Schreiber, to form the Premier Lacrosse League.
Josh King:
Since the league's kickoff announcement last fall, they've earned venture capital funding from The Raine Group, Chernin Group, CAA, Bloom CAPITAL and, as of Tuesday, an investment from Alibaba co-founder and executive vice chairman, Joe Tsai. That journey to help put pro lacrosse on the map in the great tradition of Pete Rozelle in the NFL, Kenesaw Mountain Landis in Major League Baseball, and Maurice Podoloff in the NBA, here comes Paul Rabil and the Premier Lacrosse League. Welcome, sir, inside the ICE House.
Paul Rabil:
Thank you for having me. It was quite an introduction.
Josh King:
You're familiar with the trading floor as you were here in the fall to discuss the official launch of the PLL. I saw some of your social video of it and over the past few days to discuss recent investments in the league. You've certainly made your way around New York, gaining venture capital funding left and right, even from some former lacrosse players, like Joe Tsai. Why do lacrosse players make good businessmen?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. It's a great question, and I'm not sure that it is lacrosse specifically as it is student athletes. Having been one myself, it's, from an early age, essentially holding two full-time jobs. But some of the core principles of competing on field, the work ethic that gets awarded in the short term by a team win or if you're in an individual sport, an individual win, and then in the occurrence of where you lose, the immediate feedback loop of having to go back to work.
Paul Rabil:
I think understanding the wider narrative of competition in sports, preparing for your competition, trying to have as wide a peripheral vision as possible, those are all intangibles, I think, that translate well into business. And then I think the biggest challenge and transition for athletes is that if you become a professional athlete, you continue down that path of performance through your 20s as a woman and man in business.
Paul Rabil:
You're spending a lot of time acquiring new skill and understanding small things, like building a calendar and living in a calendar to direct reporting, to performance reviews, to building a resumé, and understanding corporate vernacular. That stuff matters and is important. So I think a lot of student athletes and sports business professionals and now professional athletes are dovetailing while they're playing into business and investing. That's why we've seen a lot of crossover.
Josh King:
On top of your Twitter feed, you have this letter that begins with The Stick. And yet, it's brought you all over the world, allowed you to be meet new people, make new friends, interact with fans. Tell me about the first time you picked up a stick.
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. It's pretty amazing. I appreciate you bringing that up. Often causes this sense of nostalgia, being very fortunate to have played this game. I grew up playing basketball and soccer, and I swam, and same with my brother's a co-founder and chief executive officer of this business. Our parents did whatever they could to get us into the rec programs in Montgomery Village, Maryland. And then we had a neighbor, I was 12 at the time, and my brother was 14, that was playing lacrosse, was very fond of it, and gave us his backup sticks and said, "Hey, why don't you come out to the local rec team?"
Paul Rabil:
We didn't know what lacrosse was. Maryland and New York have a reputation for being the hotbeds of the sport, but it's actually Baltimore and Long Island, if you really get deep into the weeds. So being an hour and a half south of Baltimore, we didn't have much exposure in the early '90s to lacrosse, so we were still figuring it out. My only source of improvement at the time was your local rec coach and some of your peers that are on your team.
Paul Rabil:
This was pre new media, so the only media we had exposure to at the time was linear. Lacrosse wasn't on television, outside of the national championship game. So it was all up to your imagination. I bring that up because if you look at a kid now who gets a stick for the first time, whether they're 12, six, or two, is they immediately, through multiple screens, have access to the game at the highest level on YouTube, through instructionals, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Amazon, and then the major networks, like NBC, that we've structured a partnership with can get that game out there because sport is so aspirational.
Paul Rabil:
It's design-oriented. It's based on your sports idols, if you're a young basketball player following LeBron or Steph Curry. So we have a great opportunity right now and have transitioned pretty quickly to the sports league and why we built the PLL. This wasn't an opportunity for us 10 years ago, much less when I was 12 years old. And then 10 years from now, it may be too late. So we talk a lot about that stuff.
Paul Rabil:
But I started when I was 12, backup stick from a neighbor, had a lot of trouble with it because it's highly technical. My mom kept me in the game even though I wanted to quit and go back to basketball and soccer. And then I progressed. It caught on when I was in eighth grade. And then I caught a break in ninth grade and was playing on the varsity team.
Josh King:
Did you have a favorite brick wall, like I did, just for back and forth, back and forth?
Paul Rabil:
Side of my house. I was lucky that-
Josh King:
Did you put any holes in windows?
Paul Rabil:
A ton. I spent probably more time either running or helping my dad repair some of the windows, because there were neighbors and our own windows alike that were getting damaged.
Josh King:
The side of a house flat or did you have shingles that you get all sorts of carom?
Paul Rabil:
It was flat, but you have the carom from the brick essentially. And then you have a young player who has no skill, that's blaming his pocket for bad passes that are skyrocketing into the neighbor's home. We had about probably 15 yards in between our single home and our neighbors. And then as I advanced, my dad got me a goal for the backyard. We had a narrow backyard. And then we went in and built some netting around it. But again, we're still talking about a very inaccurate eighth grader.
Josh King:
Did you find yourself easily ambidextrous or were you a single-handed player for most of your early years?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. I was a single-handed player for most of my early days. Actually, it wasn't until I got to Johns Hopkins where I really developed my left hand. That was with Seth Tierney, who's now the head lacrosse coach at Hofstra and also an assistant coach for Team USA, and he's the chairman of our Lacrosse Advisory Board at the PLL. So we built those relationships. But it's funny. Now, as the game has grown, you're not getting recruited to Johns Hopkins or Syracuse or Virginia or Duke if you're not a skilled player with both hands. So I caught the earlier wave, so to speak, of you're just raw talent being recruited to play in college.
Josh King:
I mean were you a pain-in-the-ass kid in terms of your mom trying to put dinner on the table and you're still putting balls against the side of the house until the darkness comes? Those long summer days, you're out there until 9:00?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. I have so much gratitude for my mom and my dad because I was definitely a pain-in-the-ass kid. I was either out on the wall, and I didn't realize at the time until I heard my cousin, visiting back home over a holiday, play against the wall. It's a pretty big thud that you're hearing consistently inside and never, never did my mom or dad ever say they were annoyed or, "Hey, maybe slow down the speed of your pass," because I was doing it hours on end.
Paul Rabil:
So I'm sure I drove him up a wall. They would have to drag me in for dinner, but my dad specifically would turn his headlights on on his car because I would want to play through the darkness. So he would shed a light on that wall for me.
Josh King:
So from your dad to the likes of Peter Chernin, who knows a thing or two about sports programming, tell me about some of the people who joined you in PLL, the investors.
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. So not only was our business model different in that we're single entity, and we've built what we think is a revolutionary tour-based model for team sports, which are traditionally city-based. But for Mike and I, beyond proof of concept, we wanted to make sure that we had investors that were strategic. That was table stakes. There's a big presence of lacrosse on Wall Street. Every time I walk the floor, there's folks that play that introduce themselves. It's a wonderful experience for me.
Paul Rabil:
So it wasn't about going out and raising capital. It was about raising the strategic capital that could be added into the business, because building a pro sports league is very complex. It's essentially running six businesses under one umbrella. You have your media business, which is your broadcast relationship and all the original programming. You have your corporate sponsorships and business development business.
Paul Rabil:
You have your gates or your product, your experience, your ticket sales. You have your merchandise business. You have a youth business. And then you have your charitable community business. So it requires a wide set of not only skilled investors who have operated themselves and, in Chernin's case and CAA's case and Raine Ventures especially, they have an acquired taste for media as it has transcended onto the mobile device.
Paul Rabil:
So being able to have a vantage point, not only through their experience with their portfolio companies, but also lean into media as our primary source to reaching our current community and net new sports fans, having investors at the table that can support with that was huge.
Josh King:
We're going to get a lot more into PLL as we continue our conversation. I've heard a bunch of your own podcasts with Coach Bill Belichick of my New England Patriots and motivational leaders, like Tony Robbins. I also heard you talking about your own therapist, Lindsay Hoskins, steering you toward journaling to help keep your focus.
Josh King:
As you follow these business pursuits, what's the stronger tool, the body that you've been blessed with and honed? I look at this tweet, I think from Boxing Day, with your brother, "Sprints, hills, pushups, presses, core, go hop. Happy Boxing Day." Or the head with your mind that needs constant conditioning, or is it a combination of both?
Paul Rabil:
It's always a combination of both. We hear in business often that it's not just your IQ. What's become more important actually with artificial learning and computer software improvement is your emotional intelligence, so understanding that Mike and I are both in our 30s and disrupting a very powerful business sector in sports in that we're bringing something very different to the table in that it's a tour-based business model versus traditional team and city-based sports leagues.
Paul Rabil:
You also have a ton of power in sports and in media. So for us, we constantly challenge ourselves to be egoless, to stay grounded, to continue to learn to be more communicative, empathic, and have that pursuit of not only building this thing the way that we have envisioned our investors have in mind, but also doing so with the right people, surrounding yourself with great people. You mentioned Lindsay Hoskins, who's my personal therapist.
Paul Rabil:
I have probably gotten more value out of learning about self-awareness, about communication, about handling conflict. Those are the intangibles that take place on a day to day for all of us in business and being able to bring that to the table in a highly tense environment, like sports, on the field and off of it. On the field, it's so communal. Fans are so passionate, and players are so instinctual. Win or lose, it often affects them. They wear it. So being able to not only learn as a player, but also as an executive has helped me greatly and deal with challenges.
Paul Rabil:
So I compartmentalize that, but it goes back to ... I'll make a quick comment around my growth as a young kid. I grew up with learning differences. I have auditory processing disorder and ADHD. My sister has dyslexia. My brother has similar learning differences as I. So we became really close as a family because of it and also learned from those in the LD space that have excelled either as entrepreneurs or operators or entertainers.
Josh King:
You were tweeting about one of them a couple weeks ago.
Paul Rabil:
Well, Richard Branson's-
Josh King:
Richard Branson, right.
Paul Rabil:
... a big one. Yeah. Magic Johnson and a number of folks in both sports and entertainment and business. We started a family foundation in 2011 where our goal was to look at where I found a lot of confidence as a young athlete and entrepreneur. It's called the Paul Rabil Foundation. But we work in two ways. We work with educational partners to give scholarships to families that are in need of such because there's a larger challenge that funding the public school system with bespoke training for children with specific learning differences, per your question.
Paul Rabil:
Right now in most schools across the country, every child with LD is lumped into one classroom. It's not a conducive learning environment. It's more expensive for the school system to do that. But as a result, private schools are now specializing in specific learning differences upbringing. So we have started by working with those schools specifically because it's difficult to get funding if you're a family that doesn't have it.
Paul Rabil:
We also work with an afterschool dyslexia tutoring program called National Dyslexia Tutoring Program. And then we're working with public schools as well as private schools that don't specialize in just helping aid their LD department. So I say that because I always struggled with the traditional way of learning. I found out,, as I kind of ventured into business, that there was this learning loop that was giving me an opportunity to fully complete a cycle and progress.
Paul Rabil:
That is stage one, you're either going to hear or read a new form of content and that usually stores into a short-term memory bank. Part two is what I do now is just write it down. So you basically capture that, write it down. That helps store it into midterm learning. And then long term comes when you share it with someone else. That's why I think a lot of the oral presentation classes or classes in school where you bring a student up to perform or teach back to the students, that's when you complete the full loop.
Paul Rabil:
So I talk a lot, obviously, but I'm doing so by also processing currently a lot of the information that we're taking in on a day-to-day basis or some of the stuff that's coming up for the first time.
Josh King:
So Paul, you were an All-American in both high school and college, part of the '05 and '07 championship teams for Johns Hopkins that I mentioned earlier. Let's take a listen to the final moments of the '05 game against Virginia.
Dave Ryan:
Dixon wide soon. Save, Schwartzman. How good was that? Here's Rabil, under a minute left, with Poskay chasing him. Paul Rabil is unsettled. Benson Irwin scores. He wins the game for Hopkins. The senior has done it, and Johns Hopkins is through to the final.
Josh King:
He said you were unsettled, but you settled down pretty fast. What was that moment like?
Paul Rabil:
Wow. That was crazy. I get chills listening to it. I hadn't watched or heard that in a while. I think it was Dave Ryan on the call. It's fascinating. I've seen an interview with LeBron James recently, and he will sit down and recall every moment from a play in a regular season game. Now, this was a semi-final against Virginia.
Josh King:
These players and golfers can do every shot from their whole careers.
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. It's dynamic. I think it shows the brilliance and the complexities of our brains and how athletes tap into different aspects and certain business people or artists or entertainers and so on. But I can remember that, and I've played hundreds of games since and thousands of practices, as if it was yesterday. That was toward the end of our overtime period against Virginia. It was a slug fest, that game. It was at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
Paul Rabil:
We had had an extended shift, meaning I started out on offense. And then I had to carry back to stop, transition, and play defense. I was a freshman on that team and wasn't a great defender.
Josh King:
With a short stick at that point?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah, the short stick. I got caught on Kyle Dixon, who was their first team All-American midfielder. He had made a play where he had made a split dodge, ran right by me, and moved it. So it had to rotate our defense around. And then the ball swung back to him, and he took a shot. It went off net, and that's what David said. I think Schwartzman had a bead on it. And then the ball came back around. They took a shot, and Jesse made a save. And then we shoot out in transition.
Paul Rabil:
So he passed it to Tom Garvey, who got it up the field to me. One thing that we had talked about in scouting was that Virginia's offensive midfielders, they tried to get off in transition. So if we could stay on, we could create an uneven situation where we had more players than them on the field. So that was going through my head. I got the ball from Tom Garvey and just ran. Benson Irwin, who was our D middie at the time, so he was on the field for the right reasons. I was on for the wrong reasons.
Paul Rabil:
So he was trailing me. Matt Poskay was coming back, who was also a hybrid attackman, so not a traditional defender. We had a five on four. So my job, talking about Bill Belichick and Coach Pietramala at the time, was just do something simple. I carried as if I was going to shoot. Matt Poskay comes down to me. I turn around and pole-passed it to Benson Irwin for a step-down shot. That's what happened.
Josh King:
So that's '05?
Paul Rabil:
That was '05, yeah.
Josh King:
That was '05, Paul. That's 14 years ago. I heard your conversation with Belichick, that you're constantly developing as a player using your smarts where your speed might not be what it once was, a little less willing to take a hit maybe. You said that it took you a while to perfect your cut.
Josh King:
In the heat of a championship game, how conscious are you and your teammates about your various strengths and weaknesses, like you were just describing? Or with 50,000 people at Lincoln Financial, does pure adrenaline take hold?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah, it's a little bit of both, Josh. It's interesting. I think where the New England Patriots' dynasty has been so strong is in the preparation leading up to games and where we were very strong, too, with Coach Pietramala's leadership on that '05 and even the '07 and '08 teams that made it to the championship is our preparation was so meticulous. But when the game starts, it's purely instinctual, but you hope that you prepare so much, going back to those learning loop conversation, that the preparation is instinctual in your reactions to plays like that.
Paul Rabil:
So there are times where if you're out on the field, and athletes talk about it being in the zone or in a flow state, Steven Kotler kind of coined that, is that the game does feel like it slows down. That's when you can tap into existential thoughts and be really a terrific play maker on the field. But assume that's not going to happen every game. Athletes are best when they're just being reactive.
Paul Rabil:
So I think it's a conversation where we do both. But that's why coaches and teams that prepare so well and almost do it to a point where it's an excess ... I remember we would have our scatter reports on field, then off field. And then we would have quizzes where we would have to, again, oral presentation, report back our opponents' tendencies to the team. At the time when I was 18, I was like, "This is ridiculous and redundant."
Josh King:
I'm at Johns Hopkins University. I got classes where I have to do this stuff.
Paul Rabil:
I got classes. I've got more work now. But it pays off when you think about that play.
Josh King:
Then it's 2008, your senior year. Gillette Stadium, another NCAA championship, you end up with a career high, six goals and one assist. But the outcome is not the same as '05. How does that affect your interest in continuing the game post-college?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. I think athletes refuel after loss or poor performance. The challenge is how to handle a lot of those feelings. I had a similar defeat on the world championship stage in 2014 when Canada beat US. We had won in 2010 and then were fortunate to end up on the winning side this past summer. But those moments, 2014 and in 2008, they were some of my lowest as an athlete. But as I reflect on my career, they were also the most beneficial.
Paul Rabil:
It probably sounds cliche because it's easier, certainly, maybe not even cliche, it's easier to say that when you're out of that muck. But you really go into a deep state of sadness and, in some cases, depression or anger. It's difficult to get out of your own head. Our most critical voice is the inner one. But again, that is that obsessive-compulsive reaction that athletes get on field from loss. They hate it.
Paul Rabil:
Larry Bird used to say that he plays the game not to lose, because he just hated the feeling of loss, more than playing to win. Over time, that can actually be eroding because you're constantly thinking about downside, and you're not enjoying the moments, which are equally as important. So I think I'm kind of moving back over to the importance of personal and sports therapy and thinking about the psychology of how to compress and decompress in certain cases and move forward.
Josh King:
Talking about Bird and playing not to lose, it's 2019 now. I've looked at some of your tweets as the Hopkins squad begins its campaign this year, as much hope and expectation as the Blue Jays always face when they begin a new season. And yet, they drop their opening game to unranked Towson 17 to 8. How does that fuel the team for the rest of the season, and could it affect their march to another championship?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. That was a tough loss. Lacrosse is very dynamic. Towson has one of the top face-off players in the country, if not the best. So if you own the X, like they did in that game, in some cases you're having two-to-one or three-to-one possessions. So it's difficult for an offense or a team to surmount that. That said, I think what we've seen in college lacrosse and the sport in general with the participatory growth and the continued interest at the college international and pro level is that the game has reached a level of parity that it didn't have when I was playing college lacrosse.
Paul Rabil:
So to the level of how Hopkins will respond, I have faith in Coach Pietramala and the team. Nobody wears a loss like coach Pietramala. So I think about him often. He reminds me a bit of a Nick Saban or a Bill Belichick in the way that they handle losses. But I think overall when the guys get to week five or week six or week eight, there's going to be so much that takes place that they're not even going to remember the Towson game, truly.
Paul Rabil:
When we won a championship in 2007, we were four and four. For a Hopkins team in the regular season, that was unheard of. And then when we made it back in 2008, we were three and five to start the year. So this game is definitely changing,
Josh King:
Talking about the game changing, sports changing in general, President Trump recently said that he'd have reservations about his son playing football. The numbers in Pop Warner are falling. Concussions aren't as prevalent on a lacrosse pitch as they are in the gridiron, but there are still risks. But make the pitch for the sport compared with soccer, baseball, or football today.
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. Well, great question. The commentary around physical wellbeing and health is one that we're keeping a keen eye on and working on with our official medical partner and PT teams. Part of that tour-based model is we can optimize that experience for all of our players and teams by having that single-entity access and all teams in one location at every site, from training camp through regular season, playoffs, and championship.
Paul Rabil:
So it's really important in all sports because concussions, whether it's soccer, which is a non-contact sport, rates very high because of the head-to-head contact on headers and even ball striking head itself. The pitch for lacrosse is that, for me specifically, and I can only talk through my lens, is that I loved contact of football. I loved the skill and the agility of basketball. I love the hand-eye of baseball and hockey. I love the endurance and the strategy of soccer.
Paul Rabil:
Lacrosse captures all of those aspects. It's a contact sport. It's free flowing like basketball, requires a lot of agility, a lot of pick and roll in that kind of half field versus half court player-on-player and team-on-team situations. It requires the endurance of soccer where you're on the pitch for a long time. And then the hand-eye coordination of baseball and hockey because it's a stick-ball sport. So that captured a lot of my needs from a physicality standpoint as an athlete.
Paul Rabil:
And then I think why we see so much stickiness from a young girl or boy that plays lacrosse for the first time is that your stick is yours, so you not only string it and design it and, in some cases, pick your own handle to match the head. And then the same thing with your gloves or elbow pads or helmet, there's so much customization, that you own your tool, and that's different than basketball, football, and even baseball, outside of a glove. I think that expressionism, that stylistic component of our sport is where you see that obsession come in from a lot of the Gen Z's.
Josh King:
So true. I remember taking my stick to bed with me.
Paul Rabil:
Yeah.
Josh King:
I mentioned Jim Brown earlier in the show. I want to hear Roy Simmons Jr., the legendary Syracuse coach and Dick Schaap recall what a great player he was.
Speaker 6:
A member of the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, Brown was labeled as the greatest player in the history of the sport.
Speaker 7:
You couldn't stop him. He weighed 229. He could run as fast as he had to run to get the job done, durable, never got hurt. He was just the greatest.
Speaker 8:
He would just run right through everybody. He would have this little tiny stick. The ball would be in there, and he could make it do tricks. He could make it talk. I mean Jimmy was a pretty good football player, but had nothing compared to what he was as a lacrosse player.
Josh King:
Paul, how much history do you absorb of the game? I'm looking at a tweet at Premier Lacrosse League that I think you retweeted, and this is in recognition of Black History Month. "We begin with the Morgan State Bears Lacrosse Team, the first historically Black institution to start an NCAA program." They had one of the greatest upsets in history.
Paul Rabil:
Yep. That was in 1970, and the program really had that great run from 1970 to 1975. This was two years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so during the civil rights era. That was incredibly powerful. You look at those guys as heroes that have not only played the game at the highest level, but did so facing a lot of racism. One of my former teammates at Johns Hopkins, and he's an operator here with the PLL and a world-class player, Kyle Harrison, his dad, Dr. Miles Harrison, played on that team.
Paul Rabil:
Jim Brown, who we listened to, I've been very lucky to build a relationship with him. We're out in LA now, and Jim and his wife, Monique, are based out there as well.
Josh King:
I saw a video of him just tossing back and forth by his pool in LA.
Paul Rabil:
That's right. That's right. I was with him down in Atlanta during Super Bowl week. He kindly invited me to a dinner that they were hosting on behalf of their foundation. Jim cares greatly about the game and the greatest of all time. What he has done and what he stands for are the same core principles that we want to align with, with the PLL, so understanding the history of the game and its roots. I think over the last three decades or so the game and, in some cases, deserving and in others, it's developed a Northeast preparatory school stereotype.
Paul Rabil:
But underneath all of that is a game that has been around for thousands of years. It's the oldest team sport in North America. It was founded by Native American people. It continues to be, at the highest level, played by some of the top talent in the Thompsons. Lyle's been a close friend of mine and arguably the greatest player in the world right now. So understanding not only the roots of the game, folks like Oren Lyons, who was arguably the best goalie of all time, and the impact that they had leading to where we are today, but also in PLL efforts going to work back and recognize that through media, through actual physical recognition onsite and through a number of other initiatives we've yet to disclose. But that's table stakes for us is telling the history of our sport because it's really powerful.
Josh King:
I mean speaking about performance in any sport at the top level, Paul, I was struck by the final race of skiing legend, Lindsey Vonn, in Sweden, embraced by the only person who won more World Cup races than her, Sweden's own Ingemar Stenmark, who took 86 wins to her 82. It's such a long road for an elite athlete in lacrosse or skiing or any other sport, especially outside of the marquee sports with the big money deals, the travel, the injuries.
Josh King:
Tell me about the world of a pro lacrosse player once the cheers of those college championships at Gillette start to fade away.
Paul Rabil:
So when I graduated, it was in 2008. It was the launch of Facebook fan pages. I mention that because Facebook was, when I was a freshman, a college-only platform. And then they invited 16-year-olds up and then folks that are outside of college. During that 2007 national championship game where we won, there was a combination of two things that happened. One, a gentleman named Josh Lane, who I didn't know at the time, created a highlight video of me and uploaded it to YouTube. And then the other was that Facebook invited open access to non-college students.
Paul Rabil:
So I started to receive a ton of friend requests on Facebook, and that came through a combination of being on national television and having this YouTube video. So in 2008, when I graduated, there was this turn of new media where if you were a non Big Four sport, you could still communicate directly with your fans or lacrosse audience. I say that because, to your question, pro lacrosse players were previously told you have a three-year window outside of that championship game to capitalize both economically and on the field. You should probably get another full-time job, as pro lacrosse is part-time.
Paul Rabil:
That was told to me. I was feeling for the first time, the benefits of new media by direct access to audience. And then on came Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat. I adopted a YouTube channel and really built that first Facebook fan page in 2008. That onboarded sponsors and additional revenue streams that were allowing me to build a full-time professional lacrosse career, really for the first time, that would be additive to a low wage for playing.
Josh King:
What were some of the wages for early on in lacrosse?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. So playing as a rookie was a $6,000 wage for the season. And then average wages sit in the range of 8,000, $8,500 for the year. So you're really just playing lacrosse on ends meet. That's why a lot of world-class players have additional jobs. I actually had a job in real estate for the first eight months. I took a job with Cassidy Pinkard, Turley, Martin, and Tucker at the time. it was actually pre that acquisition. But Bill and Paul Collins were my bosses.
Paul Rabil:
I was on an investment sales team. So I learned how to build some Excel sheets and model through a program called Argus. That was also in 2008 at the bottom of the economy. They held on to me because I think I was pretty expeditious in going to grab coffee. But ultimately, they were also very lenient in allowing me to go to practice on Thursday nights and then go play over the weekends. So that was my former time.
Paul Rabil:
I stopped after eight months because I was able to secure my first endorsement with Under Armour at the time, then Red Bull. That was because of what I was building on social. I launched a camping clinic business, and I was always this entrepreneur by necessity is what I shared with other pro lacrosse players at the time. That is a lot of what we're changing overnight in the build of the PLL and the way that we financed it and how we think about putting players first.
Josh King:
Talking about the importance of new media, social media, this podcast that we're doing, the podcast that you have, as I said, I've listened to a bunch of episodes, Suiting Up with Paul Rabil, which I got to say is a great name for a podcast.
Paul Rabil:
Thanks.
Josh King:
You started almost two years ago and, out of the gate, your guests have included, in addition to Belichick, the likes of Matt Hasselback, Venus Williams, Steve Nash, Drew Brees, Dan Patrick, Gary Vaynerchuk and, of course, Tony Robbins. A podcast is not exactly what you'd expect from a pro laxer. What have these conversations taught you? And what has that exposure and distribution of your thoughts and your friends' thoughts meant to you?
Paul Rabil:
It's an interesting one because you had alluded to Lindsay Vonn and that final race where she embraced the World Cup record holder from Sweden. There's this unique bond that pro athletes have, whether they know each other or not, because of the subconscious connection between that physical sacrifice and mental sacrifice along the road. You see it with Louis Hamilton, who's an F1 racer, to Kelly Slater in WSL, to Steph Curry, to LeBron James, to Tom Brady is athletes connect in a unique way.
Paul Rabil:
I would consider myself an avid new media user and learner, partly for the reasons that I mentioned earlier on Facebook in 2008. And then I really rolled my sleeves up and said, "Hey, if I can build a business off of this, let me learn much as I can." Audio was a natural form because of my learning differences, and I think long-form conversations are fascinating.
Paul Rabil:
So I was encouraged over time as I was building a lot of these relationships through sports, whether they were at events or onsite at basketball games, that, "Hey, Paul, these conversations that you have with Bill as you've built this relationship with him or Steve Nash, have you ever thought about sharing that with the public?" For me, it was kind of this light went off. First, I wanted to be cognizant of that relationship that I had in place, which was most important. But two, saying, "Hey, this is a unique conversation."
Paul Rabil:
We're in a world where athletes now are emerging from the stereotype of being more than an athlete, a lot of these folks, Jeremy Lin as well, so many cool experiences and unique perspectives to share. So that was the impetus of it. I was encouraged out of the gates to do a lacrosse show. But I care so much about the world beyond even what I just do, that I felt like having a forum to share that was of more interest to me.
Josh King:
And a guy like Belichick is sometimes more interested in the history of explorers than the history of pro football, although he can be found in the bowels of the Canton Hall of Fame, going to all these arcane football books that we've never heard of.
Paul Rabil:
Totally. Coach is so intellectually curious. It was one of the attributes that I think sticks out to me over the 12 years that I've known him. He's constantly asking. He has no ego. That was amazing to see the greatest coach of all time in all sports sit down with my college coach at the time, Coach Pietramala. I was a junior in college, and he was asking Coach intently his pregame strategy. It was like this is a guy who wins Super Bowls. I think that he has it figured out.
Paul Rabil:
At least what I see typically in sports and business is someone at the top level not continuing to try to improve or iterate, and that's primarily ego driven. That's just not at all how Bill operates. That's why he's been so successful. He even asked me how I think about performance. He asked Jon Bon Jovi in a different industry. So that type of stuff I've learned from greatly.
Josh King:
I mean his method of motivating the team, probably the 19-0 season before the Super Bowl loss was to get them all in the room and watch the Shackleton expedition to learn about endurance and what the physical toll is when you're in the Antarctic 100 years ago.
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. Yeah. Those type of cross-learnings are really valuable.
Josh King:
After the break, we talk to Paul about his evolving business career, becoming an ambassador for the sport, and his goals for year one of the Premier Lacrosse League. That's right after this.
Speaker 9:
Our success is highly correlated with the success of women in China, to try to empower women in China to feel beautiful, feel more confident every day. That's the mission of our company, to make fashion accessible.
Speaker 10:
Shopping for girls are an experience. Our value to the merchants and to the supply chain will also be very significant because we are actually reviving the manufacturing capability of the overall apparel industry in China.
Speaker 9:
[inaudible 00:39:51] now listed.
Speaker 10:
On the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 9:
Yeah.
Josh King:
Back now with Paul Rabil, founder and chief strategy officer of the Premier Lacrosse League. You've been part of the Boston Cannons, the New York Lizards, and MLL, and the Washington Stealth, among other teams in the NLL. Covered a lot of ground, Paul. How did you keep your mental edge as you marched across the continent in the pro leagues?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah, it's a great question. I think being regimented is really important for any athlete. In our world, whether it was with Major League Lacrosse or the National Lacrosse League, you have a home team. But many of the players, even in those home markets, are traveling in on a weekend-to-weekend basis. So you're essentially playing an entire season in the mindset of an away schedule. I remember when I was playing in Washington in the NLL, I would travel cross-country on a weekend-to-weekend basis and then same thing in Boston.
Paul Rabil:
In New York, I took roots in Brooklyn. But I bring that up because as you prepare for an away game and staying in a hotel, you have to make sure that you have your packing ready, and you have your game prep in line. You have the nutrition source. You know where you're going to go get your pregame workout in, that kind of stuff. If you can create a level of consistency, that helps with longevity, as performance goes.
Josh King:
So after 11 seasons in the other pro leagues, why did you decide that this was the right time to launch the PLL?
Paul Rabil:
So I think at a high level I had, as I was investing in new media and branding techniques and direct access to consumer through grassroots and so on, is I was not only feeling the sport and seeing it from a data analytics standpoint, seeing the sport's growth, but I was also seeing other non-Big Four sports commercially build these professional leagues that were reaching scale. For Mike and I on the outset, this was about two years ago, our original goal was to work with MLL, and that was through some form of M&A.
Paul Rabil:
We felt like, first, that a lot of the ownership groups had invested in the game, and that's really meaningful. They had given folks, like myself, opportunity to play and other pro athletes. Number two, though, is that in sports or in most industries, sometimes M&A is more effective. It might cost a little bit more upfront, but it can be a seamless transition. There's no head-to-head competition as a result. That said, nine out of 10 deals don't happen for all of the thousands of dynamics that make a deal take place, especially when you're dealing with multiple owners, which is a traditional team sports league. You have to cut a deal with each one.
Paul Rabil:
That was our work in progress. Sitting over top of it though was this conviction around where our sport can be. We have 60 countries now that are nationally sanctioned. Just this past November, we received IOC Olympic sanctioning. So the International Olympic Committee recognized lacrosse as the next Olympic sport-
Josh King:
It ought to be.
Paul Rabil:
... because of that international participation.
Josh King:
Absolutely.
Paul Rabil:
We've seen college growth, both women's and men's, over the last decade faster than any other team sports league in college. US participation numbers are up now to 2.2, in the US alone, a million players. And then there's six million fans, and that's according to the SFIA. So we have a robust audience. And then I think where we're strong is understanding how to distribute competition from the best players in the world.
Paul Rabil:
So again, priority was working with the incumbent. But if we couldn't get that done, we knew that we were going to build something new, and that came the launch of the PLL. That said, had we figured something out with Major League Lacrosse, we were always going to pursue this tour-based model. So we would have done, hypothetically, a roll-up of teams and rolled out into this tour-based model because we think it helps optimize not only for the sports growth, which is East to West Coast, but for venues that have been built by MLS owners over the last decade.
Paul Rabil:
We're talking about a sport like lacrosse, which is like other niche team sports leagues that don't own venues, your biggest challenge out of the gate is finding a stadium. And then you're a low priority tenant on that lease, and you have to get optimal game time so you can go to a network. So that's an outside-to-in strategy. We wanted to look inside out, best players, best competition, most important to any sports league.
Paul Rabil:
Number two, how you distribute it. So tour-based model allows us to go to the networks first, find interest, and then programming windows and book those programming windows. Then as we look at our tour-based model, similar to the Final Four, Josh, which you're familiar with, where you have eight teams across three divisions descend upon a major market city, and they all play at that professional venue in that city over the course of that weekend.
Paul Rabil:
So we'll be booking over the slate of a full regular season, All-Star break, playoffs, and championship, state-of-the-art venues in major market cities. All six of our teams will descend upon that city each weekend and compete. So each team will play once. There will be three games that'll be served to our audience and lacrosse fans. Those three games will be distributed on NBC, and that'll be game week one.
Paul Rabil:
So it's a hybrid of what we know works, so proof of concept in lacrosse, which is the Final Four, and then what we see in individual sports, which is tour-based, whether that's NASCAR or PGA tour, WSL, UFC, or even WWE.
Josh King:
How do you zero in on which cities are going to be part of your season tour and then where that final championship is going to be?
Paul Rabil:
What we built was a scorecard that consisted of macro and micro data around lacrosse participation numbers in each of the major market cities. So we looked at about 250 cities. We pulled household television ratings when lacrosse, primarily college lacrosse, is on television. So we were able to get access to that through some of our investors. And then we looked at broader sports trends, so available venues in a specific major market city that met our ideal outfit, which was about 20 to 25,000 seats, fiber optic connectivity, and that great experience for the fan.
Paul Rabil:
So we were pulling on all these different levers. We announced 30 finalists a few weeks ago through NBC and will be deciding our 12 cities as early as this week, announcing them, subsequently carrying us through the month of March. So there's a marketing strategy behind the curtain that we think about, to quote Adam silver, as commissioner of the NBA. 95% of the games are consumed through one medium or another. There's so much storytelling that takes place.
Paul Rabil:
The rest is in person and that experience, which you have to get right. So we think very critically around not only the narrative of our league but, in this case, where we're going and making sure that we're ready to roll that out appropriately, and we're very close.
Josh King:
You were talking about the relationship you had with the incumbent lacrosse league. The Alliance of American Football, Paul, which had its inaugural season opener just a couple weeks ago is another popular sports startup, even beating the ratings of Saturday night's NBA game, which I'm sure Adam Silver's not happy about. But it's pitched itself as a complement to the NFL rather than a challenger. Let's hear more on the inaugural weekend.
Speaker 11:
I think this league is good for the NFL. I think more football is good for everybody, including the NFL. What this league has shown, and I understand it's a 2.1 rating. It beats the NBA game of the week. It's the first week, and we'll see where it goes from here. I understand the concept of sustainability. I saw what happened with the XFL, whatever it was, some more than a decade ago, almost two decades ago. Ratings went consistently down from their opening week.
Speaker 11:
There's a curiosity factor. However, I do think this reveals a couple things, some of which, all of which really are good for the NFL. Number one, this shows there's an appetite for football. People want more football. They want football year around. It's the number one sport in America. It is proven. It is king, and it reigns. Second. I think there's things in these AAF games that show the NFL can make improvements.
Josh King:
Paul, lacrosse is not football. Let's talk about television and the experience you hope to provide fans watching on the tube. You signed a deal with NBC to broadcast 17 games on NBC Sports, stream 20 more games on NBC Sports Gold, and air games on NBC. These days, the options for streaming are endless. You talked about it earlier. I can re-watch clips on YouTube, follow my favorite players on Instagram, and get up-to-the-minute alerts on my phone from Bleacher Report.
Josh King:
But if a Premier Lacrosse League game is being shown on NBC Main, which broadcasts to 116 million households nationwide, it's sure to draw an even larger crowd. How do you plan to combine both traditional and digital streaming, and how will that increase viewership? What aspects of the game that we've been talking about for a while now will come home into the living room that viewers won't expect?
Paul Rabil:
We're really excited about our partnership with NBC Sports. It's a co-investment. This isn't a time buy. They're investing in the production. They're investing in the programming windows, the talent. As a result, they're rev share partners as well. That's really meaningful because they're promoting this game, and they have a resumé that shows John Miller and Co taking emerging properties to the mainstream, whether it's the NHL, whether it's the English Premier League, Tour De France, NASCAR.
Paul Rabil:
They're fantastic at it. A lot of it has to do with their production and their innovation and their risk-taking appetite. To your point, being able to secure linear programming windows was incredibly important, not only from the quality of production, but the validation of our product. There's nothing that, and even referencing the AAF this past weekend, that will in the near term and I'm not sure even the long term as OTT becomes even more ubiquitous, that can substitute for a main network television live broadcast.
Paul Rabil:
The AAF had CBS two time slots this weekend. So that's a baked-in audience. They're going to perform much differently, and they did, on the NFL Network rating numbers and CBS Sports. Now, we have NBC three programming spots on the main network, 116 million homes. That automatically gets us in front of new sports fans. We have to capture that with the innovative broadcast and make sure that the games are played at the highest level. You can talk about rules and style of production as well.
Paul Rabil:
But NBC Sports, which is in 83 million homes, just surpassed ESPN 2. It's the second largest sports-specific network behind ESPN. So that type of exposure is very additive to us. The difference between networks right now and the digital platforms, which will say this themselves, is the digital platforms aren't in the business of production. The networks are, and they're still trying to figure it out. I'll give you an example. Amazon has the Thursday Night Football rights. They're non-exclusive and they pull the feed.
Paul Rabil:
YouTube will do the same. They'll pull the production feed. So our production partners with NBC is Tupelo Raycom Media. They're really savvy and terrific. Our broadcast will include innovative angles, eight to 10 cameras, players being miked up, POV vantage points of our players and our coaches and the refs. So we want to make sure that the game is very legible for those that don't and haven't watched lacrosse before. That's really important because it's a very technical sport. So you got to be able to showcase that game in a really modern way.
Paul Rabil:
We look at that partnership as one that is kind of leading our efforts distribution. Now, how we think about digital is that it's an exclusive deal. So games will also be available on nbcsports.com and NBC Gold. They've performed really well in their OTT strategy, creating season passes. The PLL will have a season pass. When you talk about social, that's something where we feel like we've excelled thus far from our Instagram and Twitter, Facebook, and even YouTube feeds.
Paul Rabil:
We own the broadcasts, and we're going to have the ability to share some of the top moments during games and after games and tell those stories from the field through our players' platforms and through ours. So it's a really holistic effort. It has to be. We were talking even before we started recording. We're going to have an audio series that's going to include player-to-player interviews, coaches interviews, analysts coming on, and so on.
Josh King:
Basketball has the benefit of a big round red ball. Hockey has experimented in the past with diodes inside the puck that let you follow it as it snakes across the ice. It's still a little hard to follow even a black puck against a white ice. Lacrosse has a white ball that it's a little hard to follow as you watch televised games with two or four cameras at high points in the middle of the field. How is a fan able to watch the action and see that ball going from stick to stick?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah, it's certainly a challenge. So we can look at it from the lens of Pantones. So, hey, which ball colors get picked up onscreen better than others. Tennis has invested millions of dollars into uncovering that with their optic yellow ball, that we can follow a serve through two ways. One, it gets picked up onscreen at 120 miles an hour better than other Pantones. And then, two, they also keep the radar gun on each serve. That's a unique aspect of the viewing experience for tennis. So we're looking into that.
Paul Rabil:
Secondarily is NBC, going back to them, and what they explored with this past year's NHL All-Star game is they were putting microchips in the puck so you can follow it. You can illuminate it on the broadcast or you can also just have it for a subtle reminder in transition or at certain moments during the game. So we're going to be very explorative. The good news is, being single entity, what we talk about as operators is that we can learn and iterate week to week.
Paul Rabil:
We don't have to politic across 32 NFL owners to make a decision. If we learn from our NBC Sports Network week one that X and Y work and Z doesn't, well, in week two on NBC Main, we change Z. We keep X, Y, and we bring something else into it.
Josh King:
Are you going to be suiting up, or are you going to be on the sidelines overseeing this whole circus?
Paul Rabil:
I will be suiting up. I'm very excited to play, as always. I'm 33, just coming off a world championship, Team USA, and I love this game. It's certainly going to bring some challenges, but I think more so will be intrinsically for me to be on the field and know kind of how the sausage was made behind the scenes, so to speak, at each venue. But it's something that's pretty exciting, and I think a really unique narrative.
Josh King:
Let's talk about the rest of your players. The PLL will be the first sports league to grant players access to league assets, whether it be photos of themselves on the field or video highlights from the games. More and more fans are following their favorite players, regardless of the team he or she plays for. How do you plan to capitalize on this trend, including PLL's full-time studio for player-centric content?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. What we looked at, and we have the benefit of doing this building from scratch. Very rarely, if ever, in our lifetime do we get to see a major team sport league get built from scratch with modern tools. There are layers and layers of regulations and bylaws in place with the traditional sports leagues, whether it's rights to images and assets and deals that have been grandfathered through sponsors and their access to media and so on from players to teams. We don't have to deal with any of that.
Paul Rabil:
So we're building this league with the players, for the players first. Your traditional relationship with Getty or AP Images is that they'll come in and they'll own the content, and the players don't get access to it. Everyone has to pay for it. We said, "Okay. Our biggest mavens are our players. Let's open source our content to them, and let's build out our structure beyond that." So we'll have third-party services that allow us to, in some cases, push content directly through the players' platform so they can share it.
Paul Rabil:
In other cases, our players creatively want the content and we'll share it with them. They'll come up with their own copyright in posting it. But having direct access to their audiences and to our audiences and doing so authentically at the most viral moments, which is highlights after games, that's where we wanted to be great at. So that open sourcing is one way that we're going to hack attention.
Josh King:
How are the economics going to be different for them? We talked earlier about the 8,000 bucks a year maybe for advanced players in the other league. So what's different in the economics for the players that'll be suiting up for Premier Lacrosse versus the other league?
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. So first of all, we have elevated the wages. We looked at four to five times greater comp on the outset. We also gave players access to healthcare benefits from the company because we're single entity. So we can do things differently now, akin to a early-stage startup in Silicon Valley. I knew that from my feat, at least, and from those of other players who went full-time is that we've had to pay for our own health insurance. We've had to pay for the own insurance of our small camp and clinic business that we built.
Paul Rabil:
So from the league's perspective, being able to take care of your players was really important. We looked at what the UFC does from a health insurance standpoint, what the Arena Football League does and trying to see what works. So we talked to a lot of ownership teams and organizations around, hey, where are players feeling value? So those two areas were first and foremost. And then the third was giving our players stock options.
Paul Rabil:
So it's similar to, again, that Silicon Valley tech company, where we have a singular cap table, and we have designated equity for our employees. We view our players as very valuable assets, as all leagues should, and want our players to participate in the upside.
Josh King:
And growing the popularity of the sport as more people are able to tune in. Lacrosse has long had this reputation, as we mentioned earlier, for being a sport that draws predominantly white, affluent player demographics, the two-coast Northeast prep school type people that we mentioned earlier. Tell our listeners about programs like CityLax and PLL Assists, which is going to focus on increasing access to lacrosse, supporting veterans, also fighting cancer.
Paul Rabil:
Yeah. PLL Assists is really important to us in that we're working ... It's our community effort. We're working in three areas. One is with local lacrosse programs. In many cases, they're urban-focused, but giving them access to equipment and financial resources as well as public exposure. That's all over the country. You mentioned CityLax. There's Oakland Lacrosse. There's even Harlem Lacrosse and Metro Lacrosse, Charm City Youth Lacrosse. These are groups that give afterschool access to the sport for free.
Paul Rabil:
How can we be a part of that encouragement, but also that support? So that's level one, sticks in hands, goals on field. Level two is working with our veterans. So we're working with Team RWB, Shootout For Soldiers, and understanding that, one, a lot of veterans play lacrosse and have those touchpoints. But, two, we want to be very supportive of those who have given us the opportunity to play and the freedom that we have in the US.
Paul Rabil:
That's through similar resource and financial support, but it's also working in communities in this tour-based model, not just honoring veterans during quarter breaks or halftime, but inviting them to practice and spending time when we have our players in market. The third is the continued fight against cancer. So having our role as a sports property is people care so much about sports, and that's whether it's visiting young kids through the HEADstrong Foundation at the hospitals that are in market for our events or even doing a lot of off-season stuff.
Paul Rabil:
PLL Assists is really important to the broader growth of our sport, that D&I portion of diversity and inclusion. And then the last comment I'll make, too, is our HQ. We announced that we're going to be headquartered in LA, and I'm already there. But we pulled together another scorecard based on where it would be best for us to launch our HQ. We have offices in New York that we'll maintain. Most major pro leagues are bi-coastal.
Paul Rabil:
But when we looked at major market cities with emerging participatory growth in lacrosse, LA has a market that's 50% white, 25% Hispanic, and 25% African-American. So it's also one of the fastest-growing top five and the most diverse. So we wanted to be around that diversification and make sure that's a continued signal and the way that all of these states and local cities are pursuing lacrosse at the youth level.
Josh King:
Paul Rabil, as we wrap up, I go back to this letter that is pinned at the top of your Twitter feed, The Stick, and that your final paragraph is, "Much like my stick today has evolved from the one I used when I began, so has the game. The Premier Lacrosse League will pioneer a new future for our sport. Can't wait for you to experience it."
Josh King:
Paul, best of luck with the Premier Lacrosse League. Can't wait to watch on NBC and all the other platforms.
Paul Rabil:
Thanks for having me, Josh. It was a lot of fun.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Paul Rabil of the Premier Lacrosse League. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. If you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @NYSE.
Josh King:
Our show is produced by Theresa DeLuca and Ian Wolff with production assistance from Ken Abel. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
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