Why the PLL Championship Series is Going to Revolutionize Live Sports Betting

July 2, 2020

PLL Championship Series 

The partnership between the PLL and GeniusSportsGroups (GSG) is nothing short of a revolutionary idea for the sport of lacrosse. GSG partnered with the NCAA in 2018 to eradicate the out-of-date stat-keeping software that was used by nearly every college athletics department. The PLL was the first Sports Organization to give reassurance of a season, something clearly in doubt due to the Covid-19 pandemic, by announcing a tournament style season with some added juice: a hunt for the next seasons’ number one overall draft pick.

Additionally, the league was recently approved for live sports betting. This tournament has garnered so much more attention now that the PLL can adhere to a wider demographic. Adding sports betting to a sport that is full of fast pace, continuous action and big collisions, is like pouring gasoline on a fire; everyone is going to want in on some part of the action.

Lacrosse is a sport that is still growing in popularity in the United States as well as the rest of the world, with countries like Canada, Israel and Japan at the forefront of its growing cult-like following. The minds behind the PLL are making the wheels start to turn on this, allowing the players to do the majority of the marketing for the league by interacting with fans on social media, reaching millions with a few clicks on their phones. Hopefully, this will be the reason lacrosse continues to become more of a household name in the general sporting community. Over the last few years, more and more spectacular highlights are being featured on ESPN’s Top Plays, helping to reach more television spectators than ever before.

In an interview with Front Office Sports, PLL Co-Founder and CMO Paul Rabil discussed how “gambling drives viewership”; emphasizing how sports betting will be a top narrative of the Championship series starting on July 25th. The sports betting innovations being presented to fans could be a game changer to how much live betting occurs (betting while the game is going on).

 They are even going as far as testing wearable-technology that tracks a players’  vitals throughout a game to give you more information than ever before, keeping the viewers more engaged and thus more willing to put bets on their favorite players.

If the PLL is successful, they will become the first professional lacrosse league to implement sports betting in the US, something the NLL had planned to do for the 2020 playoffs-which was cut short due to the virus. The innovative way of tracking a players’ vitals and receiving real-time feedback to derive your prop bets is going to enhance the world of sports betting forever. This is what lacrosse needs to take it to the next level as a sport and if  successful, we may soon see a surge of men’s lacrosse action on prime-time television, something us die-hards have been wishing to happen for years.