‘Historic season’ for NLL

The National Lacrosse League recently took what many believe to be a major step toward bringing the game to a larger audience.

The league’s announcement earlier this month of a multiyear partnership with the International Management Group (IMG), one of the heavyweights in the sports media business, comes as the NLL celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2011.

The league, in its current form, was created in 1986 with four eastern-based teams. Expansion, contraction, one failed television deal and a couple commissioners later the league is closer to the mainstream consciousness than ever before.

“It really is an historic season for us,” NLL commissioner George Daniel said last week on the “Washington Stealth All-Access” radio show. “The idea that this league has evolved in 25 seasons — what started out a little four-team eastern league and now is playing coast to coast across North America — is really just an amazing story.”

Daniel said the agreement with IMG moves the league closer to its ultimate goal: reaching more viewers. The company will handle all international media and sponsorship rights as well as an ongoing sponsorship from Reebok and an online partnership with Livestream, which broadcasts every NLL game on the internet.

“It means everything quite honestly,” Daniel said of the partnership with IMG. “You look at the other leagues … they have literally hundreds of people working on television rights and sales and sponsorship and marketing. In the NLL we have had people do those things, usually we’ve had one or two people doing them in the past. They’ve been good people, but they can’t possibly have the resources that those other leagues do. Now that we have IMG, IMG does have those resources, they have that infrastructure that a league like ours can’t possibly replicate on their own.

“We really believe IMG is going to help us get there.”

Ten-year NLL veteran Cam Sedgwick, a forward for the Washington Stealth, has seen the league grow to as many as 13 teams twice (once in 2002 and again in 2007 before falling to 10 this season). Sedgwick said he thinks the league is finally moving at a healthy pace.

“The league is taking steps in the right direction. I think before they were trying to expand a bit too quick,” he said. “IMG is big, we’ve always had the Reebok sponsorship, in Canada they have a TSN contract for TV, they’re just taking small steps to try and get better.”

Stealth head coach Chris Hall, who played in an older incarnation of the NLL in the mid-1970s, said the ultimate way for the league to reach more people is a television deal.

In 2007, the NLL had a regularly scheduled “Game of the Week” broadcast on the Versus Network, but that lasted just one season because of a dispute with the collective-bargaining agreement.

“I think that’s a huge step forward, to have someone like IMG with the capabilities that they have universally in the marketing world is huge for this league,” Hall said. “To have an organization like that promoting the sport and seeking sponsorship and seeking TV coverage and all the things the sport needs — it’s a great participation sport, a great spectator sport — they need to keep plugging away at it.

“We continue to say the sport is growing, and it is, and sometimes we’d like to see it grow a lot faster. I think it needs to get on television.”

As the league steadily moves toward attracting a larger audience, how have the players changed in the past 25 years?

“The level of competition is just unreal now,” Sedgwick said. “The players are getting better and better all the time. There’s always been a lot of Canadian guys in the league and there’s more and more American guys playing and getting better.”

Added Hall: “I think the game has grown to be incredibly entertaining. The athleticism and skill level of the players is tremendous. The whole entertainment value of the product has improved tremendously.”

To read more about the NLL and the Stealth, follow Mark Nelson’s blog at www.heraldnet.com/stealthblog.