Premier Lacrosse League (@PremierLacrosse) Founder Paul Rabil is normally a busy man, but since the October announcement heralding the PLL's launch, Rabil has been in uncharted territory. He said of starting the league, “It’s like waking up every day with your hair on fire. There’s an endless amount of things to do. Building a major pro sports league is highly complex. We have essentially six businesses that are functioning under the PLL umbrella."
SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follow: On YouTube a person who has inspired me the most around their storytelling capabilities and technique has been Casey Neistat. He’s kind of pioneered the influencer space on that medium.
Favorite apps: Twitter.
Average time per day on social media: I probably spend more time on my CrowdTangle than on the actual social app. I keep my usage to less than 30 minutes a day.
The role of social media:
Lacrosse and most non-big four sports have never been as well positioned to succeed as they are right now, the way that new media and new technology has evolved and the ability to go direct to your audience. When we think about our day-to-day, how are we conversing with lacrosse fans? How are we introducing the sport to potentially new fans? What’s the type of content we’re curating? It’s player-centric, but we are also developing teams and narratives around our coaches. So which platforms’ audiences digest that content in a unique way, and how are we uploading natively and transitioning that conversation and furthering that conversation?
Roster unveiling through bitmojis:
Our league is built off the premise of being player-centric. We felt like it was fitting, given how we have been rolling out our news to give the exclusive to the players. We did so by tapping into a very modern trend in social virality, and that is bitmojis. The concept was, we were going to roll out our updated website and the team formations using player bitmojis. It was going to be really cool and humanizing.
Maintaining engagement and visibility:
I especially like to break the “fourth wall.” The type of content that I’ve always produced covers a few things. The first is that it’s timely to what I do. I’m only uploading content in delayed real time, so unless I’m live streaming, my audience is under the impression if it’s geotagged, it’s a location I'm at now or just was and an activity I am doing or just did. That’s important as you build an audience around authenticity and around a broader narrative. Then authenticity. The third is inviting people into what we think is a really unique position. An example would be on my YouTube channel. When we made our announcement in October, we also rolled out a four-part series called “The League.”
Gameday presentations on social media:
We’ll have pregame warm-ups live streamed across different social platforms that we’ve yet to unveil, we’ll have postgame press conferences live streams, and we're also going to be uploading highlights during games that will be broadcast on NBC in a way to gather more fandom across social. We’ll deliver delayed live highlights and then after the game, be able to really stitch first-through-fourth-quarter results and impactful moments in a way sports leagues haven’t quite done.
Learning from other leagues:
I thought the Patriots did a great job of getting mobile devices in their players’ hands on the field after the Super Bowl. They wrapped that with a lower-third Bose logo, and they were able to create branded content in a partnership with Bose in a very authentic and energy-driven environment. The NBA does a phenomenal job of distributing the best moments of games. James Harden has a big moment against the Celtics. The NBA pushes that out, the Rockets push it out, the House of Highlights pushes it out, House of Hoops pushes it out, Bleacher pushes it out, Barstool pushes it out, “SportsCenter” pushes it out. That doesn’t happen organically.
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