Philadelphia awarded Premier Lacrosse League’s Waterdogs franchise

On Tuesday, the Premier Lacrosse League announced that its Waterdogs franchise will be assigned to Philadelphia as part of a league designation of eight new teams.

The first PLL expansion team, the Waterdogs joined the league in 2020, won the championship in 2022, and made it back to the title game in 2023. Both games took place at Subaru Park in Chester.

» READ MORE: Will Philadelphia become a Premier Lacrosse League home city? We’ll know soon.

When it came to deciding on the cities, the PLL looked at several factors, including viewership data, venue fit — which was checked off with all the successful games at Subaru — youth/college interest in lacrosse, fan input online, other pro sports teams in that market, and pro lacrosse performance in other leagues in that area.

In the end, there wasn’t much debate about Philadelphia.

“Philadelphia was a pretty easy decision for us,” Paul Rabil, co-founder of the PLL told The Inquirer. “They have PLL fans that are among the largest in population within our database, and even third-party data in lacrosse points to the not only growing but substantive lacrosse participant in the great state of Pennsylvania.”

The 14-week 2024 PLL season will include 10 regular-season game weekends, eight of which will take place in a home market. When the PLL comes to Philadelphia, the Waterdogs will play two games that weekend. The full 2024 schedule and venues won’t be unveiled until Jan. 1, but the Waterdogs’ first game of the season will take place at the PLL Championship Series from Feb. 14-19 in Springfield, Va.

“I like to think about the old saying, ‘What got us here won’t get us there,’” Rabil said. “When we launched the league five years ago, we adopted this touring model and didn’t assign our original six teams to cities because there was a lot we didn’t know.

“The next best way to find an affinity for a team and engage with a new game like lacrosse would be through your hometown team. So going from very much a national and globally sort of encompassed business, to securing that success and diving in hyperlocal to build those traditional community ties that teams have with their fans.”

In the past, the PLL has seen plenty of success in Chester. It hosted three of the five championship games there, all of which had strong fan attendance. Because of this, Rabil said Philadelphia is a “prime market” for potentially having two game weekends this season, with the other coming in the playoffs.

“We’ll also be sort of morphing the in-game experience for fans,” Rabil said. “While they’re, in the past, used to coming to a PLL stadium or a PLL weekend of games, it’ll very much feel like Philadelphia Waterdogs weekend. So we’re excited about that.”

In addition to assigning teams to locations, the PLL also will introduce conferences, with four teams in each the East and West, setting up an All-Star game and conference finals. The Waterdogs will be in the East.

Even though the decision to assign a team to Philadelphia was clear, the PLL still had to choose a team.

“We think the city aligns with the identity the Waterdogs have built,” Rabil said. “… I think Philly sports fans have a sense of sort of loyalty and grit to their teams.”

» READ MORE: Penn’s Sam Handley among five Philly players picked in Premier Lacrosse League draft

Rabil also noted that “Big Cat” and “PFT Commenter” of Barstool’s Pardon My Take have taken “quite the ownership liking to the Waterdogs,” and they love the Philadelphia market.

Of the local connections on the Waterdogs, none is bigger than 2022 PLL championship game MVP Michael Sowers. The 26-year-old is from Dresher and went to Upper Dublin High School before playing at Princeton, where he became the Tigers’ all-time leader in points. He used his final year of eligibility at Duke, leading the Blue Devils to the Final Four in 2021.

When discussing why he chose the Waterdogs for Philly, Rabil said it’s “a fun exercise” to have the Waterdogs’ star player playing back home.

James Reilly (Conestoga High School), Chris Sabia (The Haverford School), and Jack Traynor (Malvern Prep) are among other locals on the team.