A lacrosse league just raised $100m like a tech startup — and that's the real story in sport this week

Sports 4 min 80 sources

The Premier Lacrosse League closed a $100m funding round led by a private-equity firm and a billionaire, while football clubs broke transfer records and the NBA found its salary cap floating on a shrinking revenue stream. Different sports, one thread: outside money is pouring in, and it comes with an appetite it needs fed.

Key takeaways

A minor lacrosse league raised $100m from a private-equity firm and a billionaire — a sign that outside investors now fund sport the way they fund tech startups, expecting the value to keep rising.
Football's record transfer spending and the NBA's salary cap both trace back to the same force: huge sums pouring into sport from broadcasters, wealthy owners, and states buying relevance.
The NBA's smaller-than-expected cap increase is a warning — a league's money is tied to revenue streams like local TV that can shrink even as flashy national deals grow.

The week’s biggest number wasn’t a transfer fee

The Premier Lacrosse League — a sport most people couldn’t name three players from — raised $100 million this week [24]. The round was led by Ares Management, a private-equity firm, and Joe Tsai, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba who also owns the Brooklyn Nets [24]. ESPN, which broadcasts the league, added its own money on top of an equity stake it took last year [24].

That is not how sports leagues used to get funded. The PLL, founded in 2018 by the brothers Mike and Paul Rabil, is a single-entity league — the league itself owns all eight teams, rather than selling franchises to separate owners [24]. It has now raised five rounds of financing, labelled Series A through E — the exact language a Silicon Valley software company uses [24]. Mike Rabil, the CEO, wouldn’t give the league’s valuation but said it had risen since the last round in 2022 [24].

A league raising a “Series E” is worth pausing on. It means outside investors put in cash expecting the league’s value to climb — and, eventually, a way to sell their stake at a profit. The lacrosse being played on the field is the engine. The return is the point.

Football spent like the money would never run out

Across the Atlantic, the Premier League transfer market ran hot. Tottenham agreed a deal worth up to £100m for Newcastle midfielder Sandro Tonali [1], days after a club-record £85m move for West Ham’s Mateus Fernandes [1]. Manchester City moved to break the British transfer record for a midfielder to sign Elliot Anderson [3].

These are enormous sums for players who aren’t global superstars. That tells you how much cash is now sloshing through the top of the game — from broadcast deals, from wealthy owners, and increasingly from state-backed clubs. Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal is reportedly trying to hire Liverpool’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, the executive who ran a £449m transfer spend last summer [26]. The Saudi Pro League isn’t chasing profit; it’s buying relevance, and it can outbid almost anyone.

The BBC noted Spurs’ “statement spending” looks set to continue [10]. Statement to whom? To rivals, to fans — and to the market that values the club.

The NBA learned its cap floats on a shrinking number

Here’s where the money story gets a warning label. The NBA set its salary cap for next season to rise about 6.5% — well below the 10% ceiling teams expected after the league signed record national TV deals [23].

The cap isn’t a fixed dollar figure. It’s a share of the league’s total basketball revenue — so it rises and falls with how much money comes in. Executives told Sporting News the shortfall traced back partly to declining local television income: the regional TV deals that pay individual teams are eroding as cable subscriptions collapse [23]. So even as the glamorous national deals grew, the quiet local pipe shrank — and the cap, which averages both, barely moved [23].

That’s the flip side of money flooding a sport. When a league’s finances are tied to a revenue stream, that stream can dry up faster than the headline deals suggest.

Where the new money wants to go

The appetite is spreading into new markets. Some clubs in the planned NBA Europe league — a top-tier competition the NBA wants to launch on the continent — have reportedly drawn bids topping $1 billion apiece [28]. In American women’s soccer, the Kansas City Current — whose owners privately financed the first stadium built for a women’s pro team — are already expanding it, adding 6,500 seats after selling out every match [6]. Meanwhile, Major League Baseball’s owners and players are circling a new labour agreement, with the league proposing a draft overhaul as the current deal nears expiry [14].

Different sports, one current. Capital is looking for places to grow, and sport — with its captive fans and rising media value — looks like a growth asset.

What it means for the game you watch

Money is not the enemy. It builds stadiums, pays players, and can lift a small sport like lacrosse into the light. But investment always arrives with an expectation attached: the value has to keep rising. When the owner is a billionaire fan, that pressure is loose. When it’s a private-equity fund holding a “Series E,” the pressure has a clock on it.

Watch for it in the seasons ahead — new franchises, new markets, expanded stadiums, more games crammed into the calendar. Some of that is the sport getting healthier. Some of it is a balance sheet that needs to grow.

02 · Lesson · why it matters

When a sport takes the money, it takes the clock that comes with it

Investment never arrives alone. It brings an appetite that has to be fed — and slowly the thing the money bought starts serving the money.

A lacrosse league started speaking Silicon Valley

A niche sport just raised a hundred million dollars. And it did it the way a software company does — a “Series E,” the fifth round of outside investment, led by a private-equity firm and a billionaire.

That phrase is the whole story. A “Series E” is not how a sports club used to raise money. A rich person bought the team, spent on it, and mostly wanted to win and be seen. The relationship was loose. There was no deadline.

A funding round is different. Investors put in cash for one reason: they expect the value to climb, and they expect a way, eventually, to sell their stake for more than they paid. The money is patient, but it is not endless. It has an appetite, and a clock.

Money is never just money

This is the pattern worth carrying past sport: capital comes with an expectation attached, and the expectation reshapes whatever it enters.

When you take someone’s investment, you don’t just get their cash. You take on their need. A patient billionaire fan and a private-equity fund can write the same cheque, but they buy very different futures. The fan wants a trophy. The fund wants the number to go up — reliably, on a schedule, until it can sell.

Whatever the money needs becomes what the enterprise quietly starts to serve. Not because anyone is greedy or dishonest. Because that is the deal. The cash came in expecting growth, so growth becomes the job.

You can see the appetite in the fixtures

Watch what a sport does after the money arrives, and you can read the clock.

New franchises appear. New markets open — the NBA wants a European league, and some clubs in it have reportedly drawn billion-dollar bids before a single game is played. Stadiums expand. And the calendar swells: more matches, more tournaments, more mid-season events invented from nothing, each one another surface to sell.

Some of that is a healthy sport growing into demand. But some of it is a balance sheet that needs to grow, dressed up as the game getting bigger. The two look identical from the stands. That’s the point — you’re not meant to be able to tell them apart.

The rule that was really a revenue line

The NBA showed the other face of this the same week. Its salary cap — the ceiling on what teams can spend — was expected to jump 10%. It rose about 6.5% instead.

The cap isn’t a fixed number. It’s a share of the league’s revenue. It moves with the money coming in. And the money came in lower than hoped. A quiet stream — local television deals — is drying up as people cut cable, even while the flashy national deals grew.

So a rule that looks like a fixed law of the league is really a mirror held up to its bank account. When you learn a cap floats on revenue, you learn that the sport’s rules sit downstream of its money — not the other way around. The finances set the terms the game plays under, and they pose as neutral.

You are the thing the appetite eats

Here is where you come in, because you are not watching this from outside it.

The value those investors are betting will rise is built out of you. Your attention is the asset. Your ticket. Your subscription. The third match added to a week that used to have one. The new team in your city you’re expected to adopt. That is the growth the money needs. The appetite isn’t fed by magic. It’s fed by fans.

None of this makes the sport fake or the joy false. The lacrosse is real, the goals are real, the love is real. But the game now sits inside a machine that needs to keep getting bigger, and the fuel it runs on is the very thing you thought you were just enjoying.

That’s not a reason to look away. It’s a reason to watch a little more clearly. When the season stretches and the ticket costs more and a new tournament appears, you’re seeing an appetite being fed — and you’re part of what feeds it. Seeing it doesn’t spoil the game. It just means you’re no longer only in the stands. You’re on the balance sheet too, and it helps to know it.

03 · Lab · your turn

Feed the Appetite

Run a league that took investment, and feel how the money's growth target forces you to trade fan trust for value season after season.

04 · Hope · carry this

The money keeps finding sport for one simple reason — millions of us still love the game enough to make it worth chasing. That love is the asset everyone is bidding on, and it was ours first.