Major League Lacrosse On A Mission Of Becoming One Of the Big Sports Leagues
This past February, in the city of Boston a new sports commissioner was named. His name is Alexander “Sandy” Brown and he was selected to be Major League Lacrosse’s second commissioner in the leagues 18-year history.
Sandy came to the league with plenty of experience. He was an executive at ESPN in the 90s, the President on Univision Sports, and most recently the President and CEO of One World Sports.
It has been four months since taking on the job as the commissioner of MLL, and there has been a lot of fun along the way for Sandy.
“After being a part of Major League Lacrosse for four months, I can say that the greatest part of the job is that I get to work with fantastic people.” Sandy told Trifecta Sports.” It’s been fun to connect with players, coaches, GMs, owners, as well as all our amazing league-wide partners, to collectively pursue the vision of realizing the full potential of the sport of lacrosse. We all love this game, and we are all committed to raising its profile, expanding the fan base and creating elite competition.”
When taking over a league like Major League Lacrosse there is always going to be a lot of goals, both short and long. Sandy’s short term goals are simple “I want to create more opportunities for our fans to interact with our players, teams, and league partners. I look forward to adding more events to the calendar each season and finding new and unique ways to engage lacrosse fans.”
Major League Lacrosse Eyeing To Be One Of The Big Pro Sports Leagues
The long term is the harder one though, for Brown his goal is one that many in the lacrosse community can certainly agree with. And for fans of MLS, this is a similar battle that they just completed.
“In the long term, my goal is to see Major League Lacrosse considered as one of the big six professional sports leagues. The NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB have dominated sports for decades. The MLS has recently cracked that barrier, and I look forward to leading MLL to that next level.”
Becoming one the the “big six professional sports leagues” is a very hard thing to accomplish. It took Major League Soccer only up until recently to be in the big sports league conversation, but MLL is on the right track. It will take a lot of work to get there. And one thing that is going to be needed to do it is Lacrosse specific venues.
For Sandy, this is a critical part of the leagues future
“Major League Lacrosse needs to own its spaces and venues. Full stop. Our teams are doing a good job with the games and the stadiums in which they play, but having exclusive MLL venues is mission critical, and something we plan to aggressively pursue as a league.”
But of course the biggest thing to be able to create MLL specific venues and growing into a big league is getting eyeballs to the sport. Sandy sees this as the leagues greatest challenge, but he does have a plan. A plan that involves more events such as the MLL All-Star game and clinics.
“Our greatest challenge, as I see it, is awareness. MLL athletes are some of the best athletes in the world, bar none. MLL games are some of the most impressive and fun sporting events any fan can attend. We have a growing fan base, but our game needs to be shared with more people. In order to overcome the challenge of awareness, we are looking to seize more opportunities to connect with fans and potentials fans. Going forward, we will continue to host events like the MLL All-Star Game, as well as clinics and other opportunities to interact with our athletes in order to offer fans multiple touchpoints. We are developing new ways to connect to our local communities, and we are improving our social and digital strategy in order reach new fans and to stay better connected to our current ones.”
Brown and MLL have certainly taken the initiative in getting as many people involved with their MLL All-Star Game at Harvard, an event that they talked about with City of Boston Mayor, Marty Walsh.
Photo credit – Courtesy of Regan Communications
The mission of connecting with as many people as possible seems to be going well for Brown and MLL as Thursday July 28th’s All-Star game projects to be one of the biggest events in the leagues history.
As for what the next decade could bring to lacrosse, Sandy projects the growth to continue.
“Lacrosse has been one of the fastest growing sports in this country for the last 15 years. The sport is the perfect marriage of hockey, soccer, basketball, and football. There is both a finesse and an aggressive nature to the game. The unique elements that make our sport great will continue to propel the growth of the game at all levels in the next ten years and will bring greater awareness and engagement to our league.”
