The most influential player of the millennial generation is putting it all on the line, with unwavering belief that lacrosse has reached its tipping point.

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aul Rabil wants to be clear about one thing. He did not set out to start a new professional lacrosse league. He just wanted to help make the existing league better.

Before the Premier Lacrosse League was ever conceived, Rabil said in extensive interviews with US Lacrosse Magazine, he and his business partners approached Major League Lacrosse about investing as operators. After restarting the MLL Players’ Council in 2015, Rabil felt like he had a pulse on the players’ frustration with low and stagnant wages, poor playing conditions, sparse attendance, a questionable media deal that limited viewership and public relations gaffes like the player information leak of 2017.

Rabil, the two-time MLL MVP and all-time leading scorer, said he originally sought to collaborate with MLL to invest in and improve the product. And so with the largest social media following in the sport, strategic investments in sports media, a popular weekly podcast and a still-thriving playing career, the guy billed by Bloomberg as lacrosse’s first million-dollar man felt like he had answers to the league’s challenges.

“Our goal was to help re-create the professional game, but to do so with professional entities in existence. It’s never been to start a new league and be this disruptor and further fragment this game,” Rabil said, adding that there also has been an open dialogue with the indoor National Lacrosse League. “We couldn’t figure out a way to work with MLL. Because of our passion and our vision for not only where we think the game could go, but also strategically, how we could get it there, it led us to launching the Premier Lacrosse League.”

That launch went live Monday, and the magnitude of what Rabil and his brother, Mike, have accomplished has hit the lacrosse community like one of Rabil’s stinging 111-mph shots.

Among the hottest takes:

• A coup of 140 players, a list that includes almost everyone who’s anyone in lacrosse.

• A generous compensation package, with players earning four times what MLL pays, on average, as full-time wages, according to Rabil.

• Equity for players, giving them a vested interest in the PLL’s growth.

• Access to health benefits, a first for any professional lacrosse league.

• A national broadcast deal with NBC Sports Group — a package that features 19 televised games (17 on NBC Sports and two on NBC) and an additional 19 games streamed on NBC Gold.

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aysayers will point to the PLL’s touring model and say been there, done that. The LXM Pro Tour existed in that capacity for five years before folding back into MLL in 2014. (MLL’s response to the PLL announcement has largely centered around its foundation in the lacrosse community and the home team model.)

But the PLL is not LXM. Not even close.

For one, LXM featured two interchangeable teams that did not vie for a championship. It was a road show, a showcase. The PLL, meanwhile, will be divided into six independently operated teams, each with its own general manager and head coach, who also will be paid full-time. There will be a 10-week regular season, an all-star weekend, two playoff weekends and a championship on NBC.

“At the core of LXM Pro was bringing top lacrosse players and a great product band all over the country. We think that’s a really great model. It’s something that NASCAR does, that the PGA Tour does, that UFC does,” Rabil said. “But [the PLL] brings the seasonality and the competition of a team sports league to life in a way that differs from LXM.”

Another benefit to the touring model, Rabil said, is the PLL is not cannibalizing its product — the players. All of them will be available to fans at the same time and site. Sports fans of the millennial generation and younger are more likely to follow individual players than teams, Rabil said. Think LeBron or Ronaldo.

Like LXM, the PLL is looking at emerging markets for the sport. The PLL has not yet released the 12 markets in which it will play during its inaugural season, which starts June 1, 2019, but one can deduct where they will be based on Rabil’s assertion that most of the venues will be modern stadiums built for Major League Soccer. There are currently MLS-specific stadiums in D.C., San Jose, Los Angeles, Houston, Toronto, Kansas City, Commerce City (Colo.), Columbus, Orlando, Portland, Harrison (N.J.), Sandy (Utah), Montreal, Carson (Calif.), Chester (Pa.), Bridgeview (Ill.) and Frisco (Texas).

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nother major differentiator? Three letters. N-B-C.

It might sound odd to hear Rabil say it — considering he built a lacrosse empire around half a million followers across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and an additional 150,000-plus subscribers on YouTube — but the sport needs buy-in from traditional media outlets.

“Linear is still the Holy Grail in sports,” he said. “Despite knowing that our audience is highly capable on digital and are on social on a regular basis, we needed the validation and the production quality of a major network.”

Think about the conversion of NASCAR fans watching a race on TV and seeing a PLL promotion that shows Connor Fields throwing behind-the-back fakes, Curtis Dickson going into Superman mode, Tom Schreiber threading a pinpoint feed through six sticks for a dunk on the doorstep or Jordan Wolf breaking ankles behind the goal. That’s the kind of exposure lacrosse fans crave, and NBC Sports Group believes it’s at the vanguard of a sport with tremendous growth potential.

In addition to NASCAR, the NBC Sports Group also houses the English Premier League, the Tour de France, the NFL’s Sunday Night Football and the Olympics.

“That alignment with those five properties is really powerful,” Rabil said.

The PLL met with every major network and digital platform, furnishing data that went well beyond participation studies by US Lacrosse, the NFHS, the NCAA and sports industry groups that show lacrosse as the only team sport in North America that has grown consistently over the last decade. According to PLL research, lacrosse in all of its forms has a total audience size of 6 to 10 million people, with 2 million participants, if measured by how many people pick up a stick in a given year.

Jon Miller, president of programming at NBC Sports, likened PLL and lacrosse’s potential to that of Rugby Sevens, which is now an Olympic sport and a key part of NBC Sports’ portfolio.

“We have a proven track record for launching and growing new properties and leagues,” Miller said in a statement. “We feel very strongly that lacrosse has not been produced and televised in a manner that’s as compelling as it could possibly be. In tandem with Paul and Mike, and through our expansive assets, we’re confident our presentation of the PLL will galvanize the sport and serve as a great launch pad.”

The PLL and NBC Sports both will invest substantially in the production of PLL games, including 7-10 high-definition cameras with slow-motion capability, helmet cameras, radar guns for shot speed and different color palettes to make the ball easier to see on mobile devices and TVs.

“The game is so technical and the athletes are so dynamic, that to be able to fully capture it at its highest speed, there needs to be substantial investment in the production quality of the games,” Rabil said. “The creative art of a player’s half-cradle, passing the ball off his hip, or getting pushed from behind and shooting behind the back as they dive through the crease — that type of skill is unprecedented across sports. We need to capture that.”

Though the PLL will mostly resemble what fans have come to expect in pro lacrosse — including a shot clock and 2-point arc — there will be rules tweaks to hasten play and more clearly define ambiguous penalties like the crosscheck. Moreover, the head official will wear a live microphone to explain calls the way you see it done in the NFL and college football.

From a production standpoint, Miller also liked that Rabil himself would play in the league.

“I would equate it to having LeBron James or Sidney Crosby on your air every week,” he said. “That’s exciting for us.”

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abil, who is endorsed by New Balance/Warrior, a substantial operating partner of MLL, said he planned to remain with the company for the duration of his playing career.

“We’re promoting the players’ own endorsements over that of the league,” Rabil said. “This whole thing was built with the players in mind.”

Due to the sensitive nature of the MLL-PLL dynamic, some PLL players, when contacted by US Lacrosse Magazine, have been hesitant to discuss their decision to join Rabil in his new venture. Schreiber, also a two-time MLL MVP, and Kyle Harrison both will have roles in PLL management, and thus both were visible participants in Monday’s ballyhooed launch.

“It’s humbling to be a part of this movement,” Schreiber said in a statement. “I can’t wait for people to see what the PLL is all about.”

Schreiber is a financial analyst for the PLL. Harrison is the director of player relations, a fitting role, considering he co-founded the LXM Pro Tour at a time when MLL players felt they could not adequately represent their sponsors if they conflicted with New Balance/Warrior. Harrison is endorsed by Nike and STX.

“What Mike and Paul have established with this league is going to have a tremendous impact on the ability for players to be rewarded for the sport they love,” Harrison said in a statement.

Joey Sankey, a former three-time All-American attackman at North Carolina and three-time MLL All-Star, hopes to join the PLL after finishing treatment for testicular cancer.

“It’s going to be great for the sport,” he said. “Paul Rabil and his brother, Mike Rabil, are very intelligent guys. They have a great direction for where the sport should go. The players feel the same way. It’s kind of a no-brainer for us to make that jump. They have the right mindset.”

Rabil believes strongly, of course, that the PLL will long outlast his playing days. He and his brother certainly lined up the financial backing to ensure that is so. Between the Raine Group, Chernin Group, CAA, Blum Capital and Fortress Investment Group, the PLL will operate with the support of investors whose assets exceed $40 billion.

Besides the injection of capital, these groups provide expertise and connections that reach well beyond the lacrosse industry. Mike Rabil has spent the last nine years in San Francisco, helping to launch several new ventures in Silicon Valley while also going into the family business with his brother.

“I care a lot about lacrosse. My brother, Mike, cares a lot about me. He was also a high school lacrosse All-American who played college football. Sports have been seminal to our growth both personally and professionally,” Rabil said. “But as entrepreneurs, we also know that to be effective, you have to strip out emotion. I’ll run through a wall for lacrosse. But by bringing on sophisticated sports and media investors, we were able to get a very objective look at our business model and growth strategy — and get their approval and investment in that, which is further validation.”

Bloomberg has been quick to point out the important link between lacrosse and Wall Street. The investors aren’t completely devoid of emotion when it comes to the Creator’s Game. Colin Neville, managing director at the Raine Group, played at Yale. Mike Levine, co-head at CAA, played at Cornell.

But no one’s bankrolling the PLL without also expecting a return on his or her investment.

“The tour-based model is going to open up new doors for the sport in front of new audiences,” Levine said in a statement. “The equity that the players — the world-class players — will have in this league is going to revolutionize professional sports. And the product on the field is going to be top-notch. The Premier Lacrosse League is going to be an absolute force in the sports world, make no question about it.”

Ten years ago, Rabil clasped his hands and saluted to those who remained from the crowd of 48,970 fans at Gillette Stadium after his Johns Hopkins team fell short against Syracuse in the NCAA championship game, a combination of sweat and tears leaving a trail of eye black on his cheeks after an outright heroic six-goal performance.

In the old lacrosse world, that moment represented the pinnacle for any player. Rabil has spent the last decade trying to overturn that perception. He spoke frequently of a tipping point for the pro game that would put it on par with the rest of the sporting world.

That time, he said, has come.

“We are in a time, with the convergence of modern media and technology, where there’s never been a better opportunity to proliferate as a niche team sport,” Rabil said. “We believe our game will for the first time hit that exponential growth curve everyone’s been talking about for the last decade and a half. … Now is the time for lacrosse.”