NLL looking to become North American pastime

It is considered by many to be just a summer time recreational sport that has no commercial value for the North American sports fan. For years, lacrosse has been popular in small pockets of the Canadian provinces and the northeastern U.S.

Listed as Canada's national summer time sport, lacrosse is looking to make an impact in the sport culture of the U.S. where there is much more commercial potential if they can make an impact on the corporate and sporting society of our southern neighbours.

Lacrosse employs many of the same offensive and defensive strategies during the course of the 60 minute contest.

The athletes must be able to take and give hits with the same voracity and bone-crunching magnitude that a football player delivers. They must have great cat-like agility along with hand-eye coordination to catch a ball zipping along at 100 miles per hour and quickly relay it to a player just as fast.

The U.S. has long considered baseball as their favourite pastime, but according to TV ratings and attendance of the 30 stadiums, North American football, more specifically the National Football League (NFL), has moved Major League Baseball (MLB) out of the number one ranking for a number of years now.

Proof is in the weekly TV ratings of the NFL games and the amazing broadcast numbers that the Super Bowl draws in every year.

Since the announcement that the National Hockey League (NHL) was locking out the players by commissioner Gary Bettman and the Board of Governors, the National Lacrosse League (NLL) has an opportunity to be put front and centre just behind the National Basketball Association (NBA) during the winter months.

With NHL arenas sitting dark, although the NBA franchises are located in the cities that have hockey franchises, the arena have more than 40 nights when NHL were supposed to be on their schedules.

The NLL, despite playing only a 16 game schedule, has an opportunity to get their foot into the door of the sports minded public on both sides of the border.

Ten of 11 NLL teams play out of the vacated NHL arenas. Only the Rochester Knighthawks play out of a minor league arena.

San Jose Stealth, Arizona Sting, Anaheim Storm, Minnesota Swarm, Colorado Mammoth, Philadelphia Wings, Calgary Roughnecks - defending NLL Cup champions, Toronto Rock and Buffalo Bandits all have their marketing staff focusing on the promotion of the NLL games that would have otherwise been pushing NHL games.

The NLL brass look to be making the right moves as they purchased airtime on National Broadcast Corporation (NBC) for the league's annual All-Star game held in Calgary at the Pengrowth Saddledome and the Champions Cup final to get some national network coverage of their sport.

"We are thrilled to bring this action-packed sport to a network audience for the first time in history," NBC Sports president Ken Schanzer said.

Soon after that announcement, early in February, the NLL reached an agreement with America One Television Network and a host of regional sport networks to have a 'NLL Game of the Week' for the remainder of the 2005 season.

"We're excited to add the National Lacrosse League to our prime time lineup of sports programming," said Preston Bornman, executive vice president of America One Television. "Professional indoor lacrosse is a fast paced, exciting game that will attract audiences and advertisers alike. We are pleased to provide the 'NLL Game of the Week' on Wednesday nights to our family of affiliated stations across the country."

This agreement has the potential to reach over 30 million households in the U.S.

The following day, NLL commissioner Jim Jennings signed another TV agreement, this time for international audiences.

International NBC Networks agreed to air the 2005 All-Star Game and Champion's Cup Final will air on the CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia networks. These two networks, members of the NBC Universal family of stations, reach a combined 50 million homes throughout Europe and Asia.

One thing the league has going for it is the fact that the athletes are not spoiled millionaires and most of the players are employed full time in another profession.

The players are down to earth and know the game of lacrosse has a lot of growing to do before it can be considered on par with the three other big leagues.