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Premier Lacrosse League Returning in July with Quarantined Tournament Play
Published:
Man, things are getting good around here.
Korean baseball. German soccer. UFC returning on Saturday.
Now we’ve got the Premier Lacrosse League officially returning in July with a 20-game tournament that will be played over the course of 16 days.
From the league’s Twitter account:
This is interesting since other, bigger leagues had kicked around the idea of this tournament format to determine a champion, instead of finishing seasons outright, with a full playoff slate.
The PLL only has seven teams, however, so it’s much easier for them to pull off something like this, vs. putting 30 NBA teams into some kind of bracket that makes sense.
It’s not mentioned on the graphic, but NBC and NBCSN are picking up these games, so it’s an opportunity for the burgeoning league to get some eyeballs on the product. The PLL has only been around since 2018, and played just one full season thus far, so they’re naturally positioned to do a smaller-scale event. They don’t have teams stationed in specific markets, but last year traveled to a variety of locations and played their games there, kind of like a touring musical act.
(Just so we’re being clear, PLL is the outdoor league. The Wings play in the NLL, which is the indoor box lacrosse league. They were nearing the end of their season when the pandemic hit.)
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com