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An FLN Interview with MLL Commissioner David Gross

Written by Lee Roggenburg on . Posted in .
MLL Commissioner David Gross graciously consented to sit down with FloridaLacrosseNews.Com Senior Writer Lee Roggenburg to talk about the short-term and long-term strategic goals of Major League Lacrosse, including how the franchising process is handled, a subject of great interest in the Boca Raton area and other locations in Florida that are being looked at for possible expansion sites.  FLN thanks the Commissioner for sitting down for this interview prior to the Hamilton-Rochester game on Saturday. FLN: Commissioner Gross, thanks for sitting down with us.  Second straight year in Boca, is the league happy with the results so far? Commissioner Gross (“CG”): We thought last year’s game was a lot of fun, the fans really left here with a great feeling about Major League Lacrosse.  The players loved it, it was a beautiful stadium to play at, we learned a lot about the market in year one, which is why we are back trying it again in year two and getting a good look at an area before making a decision whether to add a team or to give it a little more time to percolate. FLN: Could you discuss a little bit on the strategic side, you’re eight teams right now, the goal I read somewhere is to eventually get to 16, say 9-10 years down the line, whatever its’ going to be, can you explain a little detail about that? CG: Sure . . . the goal is to grow to 16 teams to have a complete national footprint with  the league, we don’t obviously want to add eight teams tomorrow so it will all be done strategic, no more than two teams in a given year.  We want a team to have over a year-plus of marketing before playing their first game.  We’re looking at a lot of markets which is why the markets we are looking at play these one-off games.  We find there is no better way to determine if a market is ready or not ready by playing games ahead of time.  We first did this all the way back in 2004, with games in Denver and Seattle and we went back to Denver again in 2005.  In 2008 we went to St. Louis and we went to North Carolina, we went to Columbus and we kept trying new markets, seeing what worked and what didn’t work and St. Louis was a great example.  We thought St. Louis would be a home run, we didn’t have the fan interest at the time and so it’s kind of on the back burner, not that we didn’t show interest in it but it hasn’t moved up the food chain per se, whereas playing games in Columbus in 2008 and 2010, we learned that market was ready for a team, playing games in North Carolina in 2008 and 10, we realized that market was ready.  So those two got the next expansion teams last year, by playing games and market testing.  We’re here in Boca, we played a game in Tampa and in Atlanta, we’re not hiding from any other markets that we are interested in. FLN:  So then the next expansion at the earliest is in 2015? CG:  Well, because we were playing games in certain markets they could launch next year but we’d have to have them wrapped up by the end of the summer for that to happen. FLN: Could you explain the process for applying for a franchise? CG:  Sure, typically it starts with someone reaching out and expressing an interest, and then a quick phone call where I talk them out of having any interest in a team.  You know, a lot of people wonder if it’s your job to sell expansion, why would you try to talk someone out of it?  It’s simply this, it’s a high-risk venture.  You know, we are thirteen years old but we’re still an infant in the grand scheme of things for sports; a lot of people who are buying into sports teams have very rose-colored glasses, thinking it’s going to be a huge money-maker.  It’s my job to really make them understand what they are getting into.  Nothing is more important to a league than having stability.  If someone comes in and buys a franchise and exits two years later it becomes a cash drag for the league.  So we have a talk with them to scare them off and then basically offer them a non-disclosure, give them all sorts of material to review and then we’ll start gathering our material on the ownership group, on the proposed venue they want to play at and focus on the market itself.  Now, a lot of times they already know we have interest because we have been playing games in given markets.  If all goes well they submit a formal application to have the right to a team, we then review that.  Our board of managers and all the other owners in the league then vote to either accept or reject, and then they could become a team. FLN:  Okay, has a Boca-based group officially applied for a franchise? CG:  No, we are not in the application stage.  We have had, we have a number of groups that are very interested; I think everyone is waiting to see what happens tonight for round two.  Obviously, since Elev8 is the group putting on tonight’s game they would have, I would say, not first right but we want to give them first crack at it, and if then they don’t think it’s right for them there are some other groups that have expressed a lot of interest that we kind of have sitting on the sidelines. FLN:  So there is more than one area-based group that has shown interest? CG: Absolutely. FLN:  The first go-round of the league struggled.  What have you done differently from a strategic standpoint to make it more stable? CG:  Well, every league, teams come and go in the early stages.  It’s a sad fact; the biggest thing we’ve done is to make sure anyone coming in knows exactly what they are buying.  When the league first started everyone had a grand vision but at that point no one had any data and a lot of it didn’t play out initially and some people got tired of the losses of the young league and now we’ve been able to have that stability by having that very frank conversation.  You know, the last group that bought was Medallion, that bought the New York team, and one of the reasons that they bought, they said, you know, they were looking at teams down here for pro hockey.  They were looking at a lot of teams and they passed on NBA, they passed on NHL, and passed on MLB but when they started looking at the books if they were ever making money on these things and the thought was ‘it’s a cash cow’, ‘it’s a cash cow’.  It’s not a cash cow, it’s a long term vision, you’ve got to understand, we’ve got to build this grass roots one fan at a time and they’ve really bought into that and are really doing that up in the New York area and we think that’s going to be like a flagship team for us now. FLN:  TV rights.  CBS Network, the sports network has the rights CG:  20 games this year.  It’s funny, for a young league we have 43% of our games on national TV.  Show me any league of our age or our size that has as much or their games on TV.  We are big believers of television.  We’ve been with ESPN since 2003 and I think was the first year we’ve been on that network.  We have a few more years with them, they have six games on ESPN2, we went from 14 games last year on CBS Sports Network to 20 games this year plus we have 18 episodes of our magazine show, Inside the MLL.  We’ve taken 19 games and we syndicate them.  So, for example, MSG Network in NY has picked up all 19 of those games and it was written yesterday in Newsday (my note: Long Island’s largest newspaper), there was a big full-page ad for the game, that they’re getting behind MLL.  We are now looking at expansion in Kansas City because all 19 syndicated games are aired in Kansas City.  So, we are almost able to bicycle together a second national network through syndication.  We’ve taken 15 games, like tonight’s game and put them on YouTube and our feeling is not everyone has cable anymore, not everybody gets CBS Sports Network, not everybody gets the bicycle, let’s make sure there’s one game each week that the entire world can get.  We’ve put that out on YouTube and it’s been a fun ride doing that.  Learned a lot. Some of the local Fox networks has games, some of the local Comcast networks has, we sit down and our attitude is if anyone wants it we’ll find a way to get it to them, which is why we produce it with our very own Lax United graphics package so one network isn’t getting upset with somebody else’s graphics and looks and everyone has been great taking those games. FLN:  Fox Sports is coming out with a national network.  Are you able to also sell them games or do you have to be exclusively with CBS and currently ESPN? CG:  No, really our view is . . . this is an exciting time in sports media and we’re talking with everybody.  We have close relationships with people at all the networks and we are trying to find what’s the best fit; for us and them.  My ultimate goal is every game is nationally televised.  How do we find a way to do that?  Play with the pieces and see what comes out. FLN:  Commissioner Gross, thank you for sitting down with us! CG:  Thank you too.

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