Making moves: World Lacrosse talks Olympic aspirations for LA 2028 and Brisbane 2032 as it builds its fanbase through a new streaming channel

At the 2024 World Lacrosse Women’s U20 Championship, Japan completed its upstart campaign at the 2024 World Lacrosse Women’s U20 Championship by stunning Australia in the bronze medal match, 14-5, at Mong Kok Stadium

As one Olympics ends another begins, and World Lacrosse is already looking ahead to LA 2028 as the start of its journey with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

World Lacrosse, the governing body for lacrosse clubs everywhere, is set to be one of the ‘new’ sports taking part in LA 2028.

World Lacrosse is hoping that its inclusion in LA 2028 will educate people globally about the sport, as well as grow both its fan base and players. Says Christy Cahill, World Lacrosse chief brand and communications officer who is primarily responsible for driving the broadcast of the sport forwards: “There’s always growth and hopefully this Olympic piece has to help; it’s not going to hurt, for sure! We’re hoping that we can leverage it, take the most advantage possible of this Olympic opportunity, and more eyeballs on the sport. Some people don’t even still know what lacrosse is, but after the Olympics, we hope everyone will have heard of it, even though they might not yet have established leagues in their countries. But we are working through that.

“Our membership has more than doubled in the last decade. We are at 92 members globally. A lot of people think of lacrosse and they think North America, they think maybe England, maybe Australia. But it’s really growing everywhere. So hopefully, the Olympics will further expedite that growth.”

The 2024 World Lacrosse Women’s U20 Championship took place in Hong Kong in August 2024

Making moves

On broadcasting, World Lacrosse has partnered with ESPN in North America since 2022. The first deal from 2022 to 2023 covered the broadcast of three world championships, and it has grown since then, still focusing on elite level matches. However, the federation is now making moves to get all of its content aired globally.

In a gamechanger for World Lacrosse, the federation recently announced a three year partnership with multisport streaming platform and services provider Sportall to deliver WL TV, a custom digital video platform that will offer live and on-demand content to lacrosse fans around the world.

“With WL TV, we just ultimately really want to reach a broader audience in every corner of the world and bring accessible lacrosse content and world-class content to a wider range of people”

Available online via TV.WorldLacrosse.sport, as well as through dedicated iOS and Android mobile apps, the web platform launched in August ahead of the 2024 World Lacrosse Women’s U20 Championship in Hong Kong. Over the next three years prior to LA 2028, all events managed by World Lacrosse will appear on the platform both live and on-demand, along with additional feature content and select other sanctioned events and qualifiers.

Sportall is partnered with all of the new sports on the LA 2028 programme, “so they know exactly what our challenges are because they’re the same challenges that these other international federations are facing, of trying to expand and grow around the world and stay on the Olympic programme,” adds Cahill, “so I think we can take learnings from each other and we’ve even been speaking directly with the American Football Federation,” she adds, which is another LA 2028 new sport.

With or without LA

Comments Cahill on the WL TV development: “With or without LA, this was something needed for World Lacrosse to help expand our global reach, our audience reach. I think we’ve had a great broadcast partner in ESPN, but that’s of course very North American focused. They do have as international partners around the world where we can distribute our content, but there’s pockets where we were missing coverage, especially in Asia, which is a huge, huge growth market for us.

“We just recognised that we needed a solution [that would allow us to] speak directly to consumers, and that we have more control over,” she continues. “Our broadcast strategy still remains that we want to partner with strong media companies globally, including ESPN.

“We’ve talked to ESPN a lot about extending through LA and beyond so certainly ESPN is still a priority for us, but we’re looking at the bigger piece and having more accessibility globally is really important to us at this stage. Globally there’s a huge opportunity that we feel we can reach both through our own direct efforts and other future media partners that we could collaborate with.”

On 4 September, World Lacrosse announced the extension of its media rights agreement with ESPN for the upcoming 2024 World Lacrosse Box Championships, which runs from September 20 to 29 in Utica, New York. The agreement brings the WL Box Championships to ESPN platforms for the first time.

Cahill adds that WL TV is going to enable the federation to improve its broadcast product overall: “With WL TV we can create a more consistent and world-class product for ourselves and then be able to hopefully get some interest from additional media partners in key markets too,” she says.

“Right now it’s been a little ad hoc, where each different continental federation championship does their own thing. It might be more of a basic stream, we’ll call it; not to be negative about it, but probably more what you would expect maybe for a youth tournament, not so much for a senior, elite level event. One thing we really are looking to do with WL TV is to make a consistent and world-class experience across both our owned and our affiliated events, and give them a platform.”

World Lacrosse will be using localised companies on the production of its events for WL TV, using a standardised broadcast production brief to create a more consistent and professional product for the channel.

Adds Cahill on the production plan for WL TV: “I think that model may shift over time, but to start, we’ll look more local. I’d love long term strategy. Strategically thinking, I’d love to have a small team at World Lacrosse that’s overseeing this at all times. Right now it’s one part of my job, and I think we’re lucky to have Jim, our CEO, who has done a lot in the marketing space previously and broadcast, so he’s thankfully well versed and an expert in this area too. So that’s really helpful. But I think Sportall is really going to help us to elevate everything, top to bottom. We’ve done pretty well at the highest level of broadcast at our world championships with the games on linear television on ESPN, but then anything outside of that has just been the Wild West, we call it.”

She concludes on WL TV: “With WL TV, we just ultimately really want to reach a broader audience in every corner of the world and bring accessible lacrosse content and world-class content to a wider range of people,” she goes on. “We had a lot of gaps in the markets previously, so filling those gaps – at this point we’re planning to broadcast everywhere and have no geoblocking unless we have a partner of course – everyone in the world will be able to access the broadcasts. I think that will be a game changer for us.”

Joey Spallina, the youngest of 23 athletes who were named for the US Men’s Box National Team for lacrosse last month

Brisbane 2032

Cahill comments on what will come after LA 2028: “Getting into LA 28 was very much a team effort by a lot of people [at World Lacrosse], but now we unfortunately have to still look forward to the same type of deal with Brisbane 2032, since we’re only in LA 28 as one of these new sports set up now with the IOC, but there’s no guarantee from there.

“We went through this whole lobbying process with LA and with a proposal process, and we have to do it all over again; Brisbane will decide it’s programme before LA has even been completed. So it’s a little bizarre in that way that they can’t say, “oh, well this sport did great in LA, now we want to add it for Brisbane”. No, it has to be decided beforehand. So that’s a little bit of a challenge.”

Yet she adds that Brisbane 2032 should be an excellent Olympics for lacrosse: “Australia is a good market for us. No market is as strong for us as the United States is, but Australia has been very competitive since the beginning in lacrosse, always vying for a medal, so that’s useful, but it certainly isn’t a mainstream sport the way that it is in the United States or in North America generally. So it’s more of an uphill battle, I would say for us, for Brisbane, but we’ll see. Right now we’re still revelling in our LA victory, but it’s kind of getting down to the work phase of making sure we have all our ducks in a row for LA, and then of course, quickly shifting our eyes to 2032 as well.”

While in the UK lacrosse is more commonly seen being played in the upper echelons of schools than anywhere else, in other parts of the world it is a lot more egalitarian. The sport was created by Native Americans – hence its popularity across the US – but it was eventually taken up by prep schools globally and off the streets. However, World Lacrosse’s sixes format is set to make it even easier to compete in.

Cahill comments: “Outside of the UK, lacrosse is very much not that [sport for posh people] at all. It’s very much more of an anyone can play. It’s more accessible. I do think our newest discipline, sixes, which will be in LA 28, helps too.”

Sixes is a fast-paced, compact version of lacrosse, combining the most exciting elements of the more traditional disciplines. It is characterised by an accelerated, open style of play with quick transitions and non-stop, high-scoring action.

It was created in 2018 to accelerate global growth, increase accessibility and approachability, create greater competitive balance, and reduce the cost and complexity of participation and event staging, and will be the version of lacrosse seen at LA 2028.

Cahill continues on sixes: “It’s just a little less equipment, smaller fields, less players. We’ve already been hearing a lot of stories from more of our grassroots memberships saying, “this has opened up so many doors for us”. Now more kids are able to play and enjoy it, it’s just easier to organise. So we’re hoping that that continues to help globally with the type of people who are able to play lacrosse.”

Facing the future

On where this is all going, Cahill says: “I’d be crazy if I didn’t say that an ultimate goal is also monetisation and commercialisation of our product. Initially we want as many people to view it as possible and to expand our fan base. We’re not as concerned with the monetisation portion of it, but ultimately as we grow around LA 28, as we gain a tonne of visibility, we’ll be able to expand that monetisation capability that we’ll have and be able to cover our costs more, and even ideally down the line make a profit and allow some of our member federations to do the same.

“We’re not starting out with a model immediately where the federations will have their own portion of the platform, but that’s something on our growth plan with Sportall, where we can have even just national federation events hosted in a portion of our platform that will allow those members to bring in or to cover their costs at least, and to possibly bring in a little bit of money to help cover those costs of broadcast.”

Concludes Cahill: “We want every major lacrosse event that’s going on to be visible to people around the world, and right now only a small portion of them are. I think once people start realising what’s out there, it will help us to build that bigger fan base.”