Comments on: MLL: Past, Present, And Future

By: Adam Edg

Adam Edg — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:15:00 +0000

I agree, the Bro Culture – especially in MLL & gear marketing needs to go. It’s hard for this game to be taken seriously with these clowns acting like jackasses. I put a lot of that on Warrior with their immature ads, but the prevailing douchebaggery that keeps popping up online doesn’t help.
My (winning) response in last month’s Lacrosse Magazine focuses on one aspect of this nonsense, but it really conveys my attitude across the board.

By: stevie

stevie — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 05:36:00 +0000

my thoughts on what needs to happen

regarding the mll

1. Bringing back the sticks with no pockets. Nobody wants to see 7 or 8 garbage goals. Part of the appeal is 100 mph shots and spectacular dives

2. The physicality of the mll needs to be emphasized MORE, along with the athleticism involved in lacrosse, to help shed the sport of it’s entitled, whites only, polo-esque image

3. The key to marketing the game is emphasizing it’s native american roots, showing everyone the wonderful local history the sport thrives on

regarding college

players are better athletes, but simply not as skilled. The majority of the players have spent their entire middle and high school careers being able to run by everyone and when they get to college and cannot, they simply back off.

You see the insane amount of half field structuring as a result of this, rarely ever will players engage a defender and take a shot or skip a pass, or attempt anything creative while their defender is within a 5 foot vicinity. They simply have no experience working without the space.

And the refs are awful and allow no hitting

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 21:38:00 +0000

DEAD ON! I’ve been trying to think up ways to answer el__niino’s question about ‘how does the MLL market to us’ question and the first thing I could think of was to suggest that hey forgo the superficiality of the ‘Bro culture’ and go for a more traditional marketing of lacrosse. I don’t have it fully baked yet, but something like a “Head, heart, hustle” campaign in heavy rotation on the major four letter sports network would be a good start

By: Laxsacker

Laxsacker — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 21:07:00 +0000

Love all the comments, especially from Anon & el_niino…The MLL has no future, regardless of who runs it…dare I say, the product is just not that good!!! There, I said it, but hear me out. The game has changed immensely, as we all know, in recent years. I am 43 and grew up in a hotbed (MD) and played since I was 7. I come from an era where middies played both ways, there were no subs for offense/defense and players did not possess these absolutely horrific bags on the end of their sticks where the ball just won’t come out, regardless of how heavy a check is thrown. It was a finesse game that moved at the right speed, a lot of up and down the field, lots of goals and just physical enough. Today’s college game SOMETIMES resembles this but if I have to watch another 5-4 game I will kill myself. In the MLL, the game moves too fast, is too physical and people just don’t have the ability to keep up with it. That’s why folks like baseball, it’s slow, sometimes a minute between pitches, built-in bathroom breaks, etc. The MLL games become a bad double-A baseball promo night at times with the futile attempts at fan engagement…truly they don’t get it. And I’m sorry but the athletes are marketed all wrong…they come off as “dudes” with the long hair and stupid tone in their voices, mess up attitude about women…just look at some of the ads that Lax Magazine will take. It’s all very fragmented right now and the league has no chance at success and I’m really not sure if we’re ready for a professional outdoor league.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:55:00 +0000

Ha! Nothing a pulled hamstring can’t fix! That’ll put your butt in a seat.

It’s a good point though, all the advocates for the game are often participants at some level. Whether playing, coaching, reffing, ticket taking, whatever. Until the fan base broadens, financial success remains just beyond the grasp.

By: Harry Sears

Harry Sears — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:57:00 +0000

Cry Baby, Cry Baby, Cry Sky Ferreira’s 99 Tears! http://t.co/rbFCgan

By: Adam Edg

Adam Edg — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:54:00 +0000

Ok, I see what you are saying. Being of the same age group, I agree. NASL was still in its heyday when I was born and EVERYBODY played soccer.
Lax is definitely lagging, but the combination of MLL and more televised NCAA games are helping immensely. I believe the internet, YouTube, and social media are playing a huge role as well. It’s all exposure. But when more of the HUGE schools around the nation (like Michigan, USC, ASU, Florida, etc) add lax, the game will experience truly unprecedented growth. It just seems that lax is more socially acceptable than soccer (still), probably because it involves hitting and using your hands…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:38:00 +0000

You bring up a great point… between playing once or twice a week (almost year round), coaching youth, and going to watch my brother and a sister who are now playing in college (not near by), I’m not left with a lot of time for me to go to any other games. And we are certainly the target demographic. As it pertains to the MLL though, I do find myself DVRing college games on espnu and cbs sports, but not MLL games. By the time the summer comes I must say that I’m not as amped to watch lax and maybe don’t care enough about the storylines (if there are any) in the MLL.

What could the MLL do to better market the product to people like us (target demographic)? I’m not sure anything would change much except changing the time of year and bringing back a team that’s close to home (NJ Pride 2012?).

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:23:00 +0000

After re-reading your post, I think you’re dead on. We’re from the same ‘Lacrosse Generation’, if you will. As I posted above, I think it’s on us ‘old guys’ to really get behind the sport to take it to the next level. Which presents a conflict. I don’t know about you, but right now I just want to keep playing until my body physically rejects the cascade sitting on my head, not sit around and watch someone else play

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:11:00 +0000

I would say you are 100% correct on that, my one point would be that my statement was comparing NCAA to the MLL where as yours is more comparing the sport of Lacrosse to other spectator sports. When you compare NCAA lacrosse to say NCAA Football, it’s no comparison, but I think the numbers on the rise and the real indicators show up in places like Denver where they regularly sellout their games. To your point though, the attendance even at NCAA games is not even close to where it needs to be. I think it’s inccumbent on people (like myself) who are out of college, have disposable income, and love the sport to start showing up to their local colleges games and financially supporting the sport. Problem is that old bastards like me love the game so much that I’m playing my ALL games on the weekend instead of being a specatator

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:46:00 +0000

It’s not that I disagree with you, ’cause I don’t. But your statement paints the reality:
“the tradition and regional rivalry of the college game trumps anything the MLL can offer.”

The college game does have all the tradition and rivalry, and STILL no one comes. No one in any substantial numbers, or numbers enough to justify a Pro League.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:28:00 +0000

Anon, I think your point about growth from the youth up is almost exactly the point I was trying to make about “timing” up above. Lacrosse is growing because it’s fast paced, fun to play, and there’s an element of creativity/originality (in both playing style and more importantly gear) preiously only found in the “xtreme” sports.

I don’t want to go on a diatribe about why the sport is growing so fast but my point above is that I believe we are only now beginning to see the 2nd full generation of laxers. There aren’t many kids who are playing now who’s parents played. Lacrosse expanded out of the traditional hotbeds in the 90′s (for the most part) and out of the northeast in the early 2000s. When those players have kids in the next 10 years, (and those kids will likely play lax) that is where the first major wave of expansion will be. Numbers will increase exponentially across the nation and life-long laxer parents will be going to or watching games with their children.

I think this has happened with American Soccer already. When I was growing up (I’m almost 30), rec and club soccer leagues had already been in existence in my town for almost a decade. And about 60-75% of all the kids in town played at least a year or two. Lacrosse has been popular in this town longer than most (back to the 80′s) but we have only seen the numbers of youth lacrosse players to rival the number of soccer players starting about 10 years ago.

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:53:00 +0000

Very good points! Especially regarding the ‘faux wave’ of players especially at the youth level. Soccer has been and will always will be the sport of the future, so-to-speak. My only counter would be this; I feel like soccer youth participation in the US is (or should I say ‘was’ as I believe this is changing) driven by parents. IE, My little johnny can run around and he won’t get hurt because it’s not a ‘contact’ sport like football, it’s cheap, we won’t keep score and everyone gets a trophy at the end. To me Lacrosse youth participation is different in that its driven by the kids themselves. Their parents have no clue about the game. That’s how I got involved. I wanted to play a contact sport in high school, my parents said ‘no’ to football and said ‘What the hell is lacrosse?’ when I asked to play that.

I can tell you from listening to a recent Boston sports radio call-in segment about baseball participation dropping, that these older Sox fans are utterly confounded that Lacrosse is nipping at their sport’s heals. Almost every call in was about how their kids or nieces and nephews have zero interest in baseball and ALL of them wanted to play Lax instead. It keeps popping up in different places slowly intergrating with culture. Even last night I was watching the ‘Southie’ episode of ‘No Reservations’ where they chatted up an old boxing trainer about how they are losing kids to other sports, Lax being at the top of the list. None of them seemed upset about the change in youth choice of sport because Lacrosse is more culturally acceptable in this country than soccer is/was and I think that is a big difference between the two as well.

By: Da Vinci Heads - 412 Lax

Da Vinci Heads - 412 Lax — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:14:16 +0000

[...] Lee Southern, lacrosse agent, discusses how the MLL can improve, attitude reflects leadership [...]

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:03:00 +0000

I totally agree with the MLS comparison. Both leagues have had the same early trajectory. Remember the MLS “shootouts” from half field? WHAT A JOKE! Interesting parrallel to the 2-point line in the MLL. Team names is a good second example, WTF does a Kansas city “Wizard” have to do with soccer? NOTHING! MLS re-evaluated how they were marketing the game. Instead of trying to americanize soccer, they re-aligned to look more like European soccer leagues. Changing names to sound more like European clubs (Now they are “Sporting Kansas City” mirroring Sporting Lisbon, Real Salt Lake tips the cap to Real Madrid and so on…). They went in grass roots directly to SOCCER FANS to engage them, Seattle really set the standard for what Soccer could be in North America and then I just watched the Timbers take it to a whole new level with new traditions to breed that fan loyalty and push that soccer atmosphere even further. The MLS ultimately woke up to the fact that after all the gimmicks and the rule changes to make the game “appeal” to the mainstream you lose your core audience who sees nothing but a mockery of the game they love and you don’t end up grabbing any mainstream attention. You have to appeal to your core audience FIRST and FOREMOST. The MLL has yet to wake up to that fact.

I like the idea of opening up the league to new sponsors. If nothing else, hopefully they can at least make the teams look a little different instead of horribly identical Tommy Hilfiger jerseys where the only change is the color scheme to zone 2 and zone 3. They need to start giving their teams a regional identity. If you think the fans in Denver are the same as they are in Boston, quit your marketing day job, cause you suck at it! This one-sized-fits-all marketing scheme has got to go. Just on sheer participation numbers in lacrosse in general the league is going to improve, but what about all the missed opportunity! As it stands right now the tradition and regional rivalry of the college game trumps anything the MLL can offer which is basically extremely talented lacrosse players in something resembling lacrosse that ends up more like the XFL than the NFL.