The PLL Media deal has been announced, and it’s exactly what the PLL needs.

The PLL announced its new broadcast deal. After first being rumored to be close to a deal with ESPN months ago, today it became official, with PLL announcing they’ll have games on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN+. The new media rights deal was, as I’ve said for some time, the single biggest story of the offseason for the PLL. The new broadcast deal had to maintain the success of the NBC deal and build on it, or risk a regression in visibility and, by extension, growth of the league. This deal, looking just at the few details available to this point, accomplishes that. There is rumor that it’s an eight figure deal, which would be the first of its kind for lacrosse. It’s a huge win for ESPN and for the sport.

A deal like this is representative of ESPN’s effort to own the broadcasting of lacrosse, and this likely makes many customers, with myself first in line, eager to keep an ESPN+ subscription year round. ESPN has been the home of college lacrosse for decades, as people tuned in to watch the Final Four, DI and even D3 championship games years ago. Today, ESPN networks broadcast literally hundreds of college contests every year between the men’s and women’s college game. The NLL also notably inked a deal with ESPN, so with the PLL as the last piece of the puzzle, you can sign up for ESPN+ today and hopefully go from winter, into spring, into summer, and have lacrosse on all the time for consumption via ESPN+. That is an incredibly strong value proposition for lacrosse fans, given the rather cheap monthly price of ESPN compared to some more expensive services fans may be turned off by in the college game (looking at you, BTN Plus and FloLive). Consider how big of a win that is for ESPN/Disney. Instead of me signing up for ESPN+ in late February and bailing in May when college lacrosse ends, I might just…never bail now. I go from a 3–4 month ESPN+ subscriber to a 12 month subscriber. ESPN gets that monthly fee from me 8 more times a year. Now do that several thousand times.

ESPN also brings familiar faces and no shortage of personality to the PLL. I loved Brendan Burke in the booth for NBC, and this isn’t any kind of sleight against him; he did an exceptional job with Ryan Boyle. Boyle can, as I understand it, continue to be part of the broadcast. ESPN can now potentially also offer the familiar trio of Anish Schroff, Quint Kessenich, and Paul Carcaterra on the call or at least involved in some way in some of these broadcasts. But more than the familiar faces, ESPN has other very recognizable personalities that are well known the lacrosse world, but can bridge that fandom to their larger more mainstream audiences via coverage of leagues like the NFL. Dan Orlovsky, Field Yates, up until very recently Mike Golic Jr was at ESPN, this just comes to mind immediately. They are all serious lacrosse fans. I’d love to see Sheehan Stanwick Burch on a PLL broadcast, as she’s excellent in the booth for the women’s game, and does a great job making the sport approachable and understandable for a new viewer, which is exactly what the PLL should look for. It’s an opportunity to find ways to lean on existing ESPN talent that we all know love lacrosse, and have them reach their audience and share that love to hopefully bring some new fans. And please. Please. A million pleases. Get Stephen A to a lacrosse game.

When NBC decided to sunset NBC Sports Network, we all could see the writing on the wall for the PLL with NBC. With no NBCSN to show PLL games, returning to NBC would likely mean a handful of games at most on network NBC, and everything else pay walled on Peacock. NBC moved many of the sports broadcasts to USA network, such as EPL soccer, but the hard truth is that lacrosse doesn’t consistently rate better than most any other programming on USA Network, and it would be difficult to convince NBC to show a lacrosse game instead of something else that would almost assuredly do better ratings. No level of broadcast quality is worth that trade off in my opinion. Being left with just a few network NBC games and everything else behind a paywall would mean the PLL had basically the same deal the MLL had, just on a different network, and that’s a non-starter, mostly because it offers so little opportunity for growth. A good broadcast deal for pro lacrosse should give viewers the opportunity to just sort of stumble across the game. You sit down, don’t really have anything in mind to watch, flip on ESPN because you’re a sports fan, and lacrosse is on. Give it a watch, maybe you like it…follow the script from there. If everything gets pay walled, that opportunity for discovery dries up quick. Nobody just happens to subscribe to a service with no particular viewing in mind. Being on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 grows that opportunity for organic new views.

The NBC deal was an excellent one for a new sports league, with top of the industry level production quality; something the outdoor pro game hasn’t had in a long time. Even back when MLL was offered via ESPN+, there were issues at times with broken streams, poor video quality, and things like that which lacrosse fans love to lament on social media. If the new deal maintains the quality of the NBC broadcast, it’s an easy win. The ESPN move means they’ll get more games in front of people without a paywall. They did this was still staying on a major network (ABC reaches over 300 million households in the US), having games on the most popular sports network in the world via ESPN and ESPN2, and offering the entire schedule via ESPN+.

Some of the best rated games from the PLL last year had easily identifiable winners when it came to both lead in broadcasts and follow up broadcasts. ESPN has plenty of this for the PLL as well. The NBA Finals start June 2, and Game 2 is on June 5. You know what’s on the ESPN networks in the afternoon on June 5? A PLL double header. This is incredibly impactful to ratings. It’s how you get people to the game who might not seek it out otherwise.

As a fan of the sport and the league, who just wants to see growth and lacrosse shared with more people, I feel like I can exhale. It’s nerve wracking to know the sport you love hadn’t announced a broadcast rights partnership. A broadcast deal that puts the sport on ESPN and consolidates lacrosse viewing essentially under one umbrella is such a win for the sport. The thing you can point to from launch for the PLL and say, “man, they are crushing THAT” is their broadcast coverage and media deal, and that’s more true today than ever. It’s not a home run, it’s not a hail mary, it’s Grant Ament split and no look cross field feed to Tom Schreiber for a step down two pointer that wins the title.