The 2011 Major League Lacrosse season was monumental for multiple reasons, but arguably the most important reason was the attendance.
According to the league’s statistics website, Pointstreak, the average attendance in 2011 was 6,417 spectators per game. Not only was it a league record, but it was also the first time the league climbed over 6,000 fans per game. A total of 231,023 fans came through the gates that season, the most since 2008; in fact, only three totals were higher than the 2011 season, and those seasons featured 60 games, while the 2011 season featured only 36.
Average attendance has fallen every season since then. Through June 23 (a total of 38 games), the average attendance for the 2018 season is 2,689 people per game. Add to that an almost nonexistent television presence, and the league is struggling to garner the attention of sports fans.
New MLL commissioner Sandy Brown, however, is optimistic about the future of the league. Part of his vision for helping MLL grow is by bringing in executives from other professional sports leagues and learning from how they grew over time.
“It’s all about best practices,” said Brown, who worked for the NBA for several years. “That’s one of the reasons why we have people that understand how important it is to drive leagues. When you look at our personnel, it’s rising in terms of the number of people who come out of the NBA and Major League Baseball and MLS. That’s where you pick up your best practices. It’s an evolution. We’ll get there. We’ll get the right people we need to have. I’m very confident.”
Even for professional sports leagues now flourishing in the United States, there were times their futures looked bleak as well.
In 1980, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (the NBA’s MVP that year) led the Los Angeles Lakers against Julius Erving and Darryl Dawkins in the NBA Finals. Despite the star power, two games aired live at 11:30 P.M. on the East Coast and on tape delay on the West Coast; the deciding Game 6 was aired on a two-and-a-half-hour tape delay. According to a post on the blog “Classic TV,” nine of the 17 NBA Finals games CBS televised from 1979-1981 aired at 11:30 on the East Coast, six of which were tape delays.
Major League Soccer contracted two teams after the 2001 season, its sixth year of operation. The situation was so bad after 2001 that a Washington Post article from 2016 revealed league owners agreed to fold the league and were preparing documents before Lamar Hunt — who owned two teams — rallied the rest of the owners to change their minds.
Those leagues bounced back, however. The NBA is a multibillion-dollar operation that is applauded for its ability to generate yearlong interest outside of the actual games and whose social media outreach dwarfs all professional leagues in the United States, including the NFL. Major League Soccer grew from 10 teams in 2001 to 23 in 2018, with three expansion teams (at a fee of approximately $150 million, according to a 2017 article in the New York Times) coming by 2020.
According to Forbes, an NBA team was worth a record average of $1.65 billion as of February 2018, and as of October of 2017, the average MLS team was worth $223 million, up more than 20 percent from the previous year.
One of the reasons for the rapid growth of MLS is the league’s willingness to spend money to attract some of the better-known superstars from around the world. Brown said that’s one area where MLL already has a leg up on MLS.
“They’ve done very well in terms of building their brand. It’s taken a long time,” he said. “The benefit we have over someone like the MLS is the best players in the world play in this country. That isn’t necessarily the case in soccer. We can showcase the best of this game week in and week out. That’s an advantage. We owe it to ourselves to create groundswells across the country for what we’re doing.”
Executives around the league agreed the players in MLL were the biggest assets the league has, and they needed to do more to share their stories with the public. With that in mind, however, since the players are not as well-known, it’s up to teams to create other events around the games to draw in more fans.
Tom Dissette, the senior vice president of the New York Lizards who previously worked with the New York Mets and New York Islanders, said one of his close friends, who still works for the Mets, came up with an Oktoberfest Night complete with a German band, food packages, two beers and a souvenir beer stein. He said the event drew an extra thousand people to that night’s game. The Lizards have borrowed that practice, hosting an 80s theme night in 2017 as well as hosting trading card and bobblehead nights in 2018.
The Ohio Machine recently hosted a superhero theme night. The Florida Launch will have a “Salute Our Heroes” night in July, honoring military members, teachers and doctors. The Chesapeake Bayhawks are hosting a post-game concert and fireworks in their July 2 game, while the Denver Outlaws have an annual Fourth of July fireworks show that draws in around 30,000 people each year.
“The main thing is making sure the fans are coming not just because they love lacrosse, but because it’s a fun event,” Dissette said. “We have a strong lacrosse base, but it’s continuing to look outside the market and get the non-lacrosse-centric fans to get involved. Doing different promotions and tapping into different markets and revenue streams is a way to do that, and theme nights are a way to facilitate that.”
Dallas Rattlers president Bill Goren, who worked for the Detroit Pistons and Houston Astros, said the event was a bigger sell than the actual game.
“Wins and losses are important,” he said, “but I can’t sell that because we won’t know the result until after we sell the ticket.”
“I worked for a minor league baseball team,” he added. “I would stand and say goodbye to everyone, and I’d ask how we did. Eighty percent of people couldn’t tell me how we did, but they had a good time. They were there with families and friends.”
Dissette and Goren added that it is beneficial for MLL teams to collaborate with the other professional sports organizations in their communities. Dissette said the Islanders have hosted a “lacrosse night” in partnership with the Lizards and Goren said the Dallas Cowboys, with their far-reaching brand, have helped to promote the Rattlers through social media and various activities.
According to Dissette, the fans shouldn’t just be treated to a game and a show, either. He said the experience needs to be more personal.
“One thing I’ve tried to implement with the Lizards is it’s all about the fans,” he said. “What the Mets do well, you see a smiling face walking in the door and when you leave, you say, ‘Thank you for coming.’ People don’t have to come. They spend their hard-earned money. It’s important.”
Another area in which teams are looking to improve is working with their communities. Atlanta Blaze president Jim Pfeifer worked for the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks for 12 years as well as the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers (who moved to Winnipeg in 2011), and he said it was important for the Hawks — who didn’t have the star power of teams like the Lakers — to be a presence in the community, especially with youth basketball leagues.
“There was a point where you went around Atlanta and met with youth leagues. The different kids’ teams in those leagues were wearing jerseys and were named Lakers and Heat and Knicks — the premier, marquee teams in the league. But there weren’t a lot of teams wearing Hawks jerseys,” he said. “The Hawks made an effort to partner with these youth programs and made it cool for kids to be on a Hawks team. There were opportunities to come to games and have players come do clinics. Kids were just basketball fans or Kobe fans or Shaq fans, but they became Hawks fans.”
Goren agreed that community outreach was important. He referred to his time working with the Houston Astros of Major League Baseball, saying the whole staff would come together to raise money for certain causes in the community or to build houses.
According to Goren, not only is the outreach strengthening the bond with the franchise and the community, but it also helps the employees who live in the area.
“I have a staff of seven. [Community service] helps with retention,” he said. “When one person leaves, it is a big part of your staff gone.”
For all the hopes MLL fans have for expansion, Brown said that while the league has discussions with various people interested in owning franchises, strengthening the existing teams is the top priority.
While the numbers may not be positive at the moment, team executives are encouraged by the approach Brown has brought to MLL operations, with an emphasis on communication between the league and its nine franchises in an effort to share ideas and bring fans to the games.
“I’m convinced it’s the sport of the future,” Pfeifer said. “You’re going to look back five years from now and say this is that critical period where people started working together and growing the game.”