Paul Rabil Lost His New Balance Sponsorship Deal For The Insane Crime Of Wearing League-Issued Adidas Uniforms
Okay so real quick before we get going here, let me just set some context in case we have anybody new reading here. Paul Rabil is probably the most well-known name in the world of lacrosse. This past year, Paul Rabil and his brother Mike went out and started their own new professional field lacrosse league, the PLL. It was then later announced that Adidas would be the official uniform partner for the PLL so every single player in the league is wearing an Adidas uniform. Ya know, kind of like the same exact way that every player in the NFL and NBA wears a Nike uniform, or how every player in the NHL wears an Adidas uniform. And then today, this comes out…
Bloomberg – Starting the Premier Lacrosse League may have cost Paul Rabil his most lucrative endorsement deal.
New Balance Inc.’s Warrior brand terminated its contract with the 33-year-old Rabil, saying he violated terms of their multimillion-dollar deal by wearing a uniform from Adidas — the new league’s apparel sponsor — during practice and games.
The move may reflect lingering acrimony between Rabil’s upstart PLL and its main competitor, Major League Lacrosse. New Balance founder and Chairman Jim Davis is an MLL franchise owner and recently had controlling stakes in four of that league’s teams. Across professional sports, numerous athletes wear team-required jerseys from a league sponsor while maintaining endorsement deals with a competitor…
…New Balance and Warrior are MLL sponsors, according to the league’s website. In April, the PLL named Adidas AG as its official shoe and apparel supplier. The PLL also held talks with New Balance about becoming a league partner, Paul Rabil said.
They say that no press is bad press but yikes, NB just set this up to be the best day of the year for any lacrosse company right now not named Warrior or New Balance.
Here’s the thing–like I said above, Paul Rabil is still probably the most well-known name in the sport right now. And the reason for that is because he’s constantly trying to push the sport forward and get the sport out there. I mean there are a ton of guys in the league right now who are probably better than Rabil at the moment (he’s 33). But people know the name Paul Rabil because he puts himself and the sport out there. He does things like starting up a whole new league because he thinks that’s what it is going to take in order to get the sport to where it needs to be. So you would think that having a guy like that wearing your logo would be highly coveted. Which it was, considering the whole multimillion-dollar deal and everything.
But where things start to get aggressively personal and petty is the fact that New Balance and Warrior are MLL sponsors and pretty much back the entire league. So when Rabil started the PLL and took the majority of the best players away from the MLL, it was time for New Balance to get spiteful. And if this were anything more than just being petty and spiteful, well then we should be hearing about New Balance terminating their contract with Kawhi Leonard today for wearing a Nike uniform.
I’ll be waiting on that news to hit the wire at some point later this evening.
But again. This is a guy who not only co-founded a new league but is also playing in that league. He’s the one guy who has been able to take lacrosse from just a niche sport to a more mainstream audience. Example: how many other lacrosse players have been on Pardon My Take before? You’d think that as far as lacrosse goes, he’d be the #1 guy that companies would want to endorse. But instead, New Balance decided to get extra petty and come up with some sorry ass excuse to terminate his contract because he left the league that they were operating in. I get that this is a business and sometimes you need to make decisions based on business, but the message that sends to the lacrosse community is that New Balance doesn’t give a shit about the sport if it’s not making any immediate financial gains for them. You gotta start to ask why would the lacrosse community support New Balance if New Balance doesn’t support lacrosse?
Oh and Paul–if you’re reading this, I could use a little beer money once you end up signing your next deal with whatever company steps up here. My venmo is always open.