Prior to the 2018 Major League Lacrosse championship game, the league held the owners’ meetings where commissioner Sandy Brown and team owners, among others, met to discuss the state of the league and ways to move forward.

At the conclusion of these meetings, a wave of positivity followed.

On August 16, two days before the championship game, the Chesapeake Bayhawks sent a tweet that said, “In my 8 years-most productive owners’ meeting ever. The league is poised to explode; I’ve never been more excited about where it is headed. It’s crystal clear Sandy Brown is bringing an expertise to the league and setting the stage for the game to grow – Brendan Kelly, Owner.”

The Atlanta Blaze sent out a similar tweet; it said, “Today’s meeting was a quantum leap in the right direction. To be amongst the owners who care for the players & are in unison about the future of league. Players will see the benefits of what we have discussed. Really excited about where the league is headed – Andre Gudger, Owner.”

Despite the optimism, the league has had some issues in the past few seasons. Attendance has dropped over the past few years – dropping to 3,619 fans per game in 2018 – and there has been no consistent television presence. The league has drawn criticism from players, past and present, at a number of times, including after the 2017 season when players’ personal information was leaked by the league.

Were the tweets an act of the people in power painting a happy face on the current situation?

According to Kelly, the players weren’t alone in their frustration, which made the positives coming out of the meetings a breath of fresh air.

“I think all of the problems, all of it came from the league level and were a real issue. It was a real issue how everybody was treated,” Kelly said. “The owners have come together in the last year to really address all of this. The first thing was fixing the front office, and we did that. That’s what I’d tell the players. We felt like you felt in the past, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

A lot of that optimism was thanks to the first year Sandy Brown had as the league commissioner.

“I have to give Sandy Brown credit,” said Mac Freeman, the president of the Denver Outlaws. “He’s brought leadership to the room we haven’t had. He has vision. He has experience. He has drive to build this league. He’s a consensus builder. We got a lot more detailed info from data, like who our fans are and what they’re looking for. We collectively embraced the same vision. That unifying spirit in the room had everybody pumped up about Charleston, and I think Sandy has a lot to do with that.”

The representatives from different teams were not only pleased with how the meetings went, and the biggest takeaway from the weekend was that there is a plan in place not just for next season, but for the next few years.

This was evident when in July when the league announced the sites for the next three All-Star Games: Annapolis in 2019, Atlanta in 2020, and Denver in 2021.

“I lived (planning year-to-year) working in President (Barack) Obama’s administration. That’s very hard to do, even impossible,” Gudger said. “To see we could do long term planning, Sandy rolled a three-year plan, he called it MLL 2.0, you have to be excited about that. We’re forming committees to put into action things this year.”

While Kelly was happy his franchise was picked to host to All-Star Game for the first time, he was more pleased with how the commissioner and owners came to the decision together.

“In the past, I wondered why we never got the All-Star Game in Annapolis,” he said. “What was the reason? It was done behind closed doors, and we were told, ‘This is what’s going to happen.’ That’s not what Sandy does.”

“One of the first things was why is the All-Star Game at Harvard so often? How come there’s never been an All-Star Game in Annapolis, one of the hotbeds?” Kelly added. “Everybody needs to talk about why they deserve it or don’t and want it or don’t, and everyone voted on it. We wanted to build a three-year strategy around our All-Star Game so it was consistent.”

Another positive coming from the meetings was the effect new front office members were having on the league.

A push from Brown as well as the owners has been to bring in more sports branding professionals into the league and team front offices, such as Brown, who previously worked in the NBA, and Chesapeake president Mark Burdett, who has previously worked with the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens.

According to Kelly, these professionals are important to the league because they bring experience working in successful professional sports leagues, and they also bring a number of connections with them that can help the owners look at the league from a different viewpoint, including data that can help grow the league.

“I’m an entrepreneur, not a sports branding guy,” Kelly said. “My career has been building cell towers over the world for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Just because I’m the owner and the head honcho here doesn’t mean I’m the smartest guy in the room. There’s money and intelligence. A combination of the two is the winning piece. You have to hire intelligent people. Sandy has hired and attracted highly intelligent people.”

Gudger was named the new owner of the Atlanta Blaze prior to the collegiate draft.

Kelly and Freeman spoke highly of Gudger, as has Blaze head coach Liam Banks, who has consistently called Gudger an “agent of change.” The biggest thing Gudger brings to the table, however, is a passion not just for the league, but for the sport of lacrosse as a whole.

“I had been in discussion with the league about ownership for quite some time before acquiring the Atlanta franchise,” he said. “I was able to do my due diligence many months prior to that and to get approval from the other owners to invite me in. I was humbled by that. I didn’t take it for granted. I took it very seriously. I learned to make progress, you don’t have to sit back. You don’t have to wait. You do need to listen. You do need to have an open mind. You do need to talk to as many people as you can.”

“I was ready to go in April with what we wanted to do in Atlanta,” he added. “I wanted the people who were fans of Major League Lacrosse in general to know that this wasn’t another hobby for me. This was somebody who cared. This wasn’t day 1 for me. It was day 100 or day 300. I came in with a game plan.”

Another consensus that was apparently reached was that the players needed to be the number one priority.

The representatives at the meetings agreed that the players were the league’s top asset and needed to be treated as such. While discussions were had on how to make the league a full-time job for players, the most important thing for the owners was for the players to feel like their concerns were heard and that the owners want to work with them moving forward.

“I’d say, to the players, believe in where we’re going,” Freeman said. “Be excited that we now have a unified vision of where we can take this league. It’s going to get better. Help us build it.”

“To the past players, thank you for sticking it out and helping to build the league,” Kelly added. “It’ll never be forgotten what you’ve done. For the players moving forward, get involved when the league calls you. We need your help to make this league better. Don’t be strangers, and don’t be distant.”