Making Moves: World Lacrosse Talks Olympic Aspirations for LA 2028 and Brisbane 2032 as it Builds its Fanbase Through a New Streaming Channel

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

Friday, September 6, 2024 - 09:47

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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, a

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