Premier Lacrosse League To Be First U.S. League To Play Games Post-Coronavirus With ‘PLL Championship Series’ Starting July 25

The Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) announced Wednesday its plan to play a quarantined tournament in July, with the hope that this can serve as a model for other professional sports leagues in the United States.

The PLL is the first American league that will get back to playing games, with the league hosting a fully quarantined tournament with its seven teams starting on July 25 with no fans in attendance. League co-founder, and player for the Atlas Lacrosse Club, Paul Rabil announced on the Today show Wednesday that the league intends on crowning a champion in its second year of existence through this tournament format instead of trying to play a full regular season. “We’re hoping that other pro leagues can use this model as an indicator to do something where we can bring sports back that’s medically safe,” said Rabil.

The league has said that it has three stages of testing for the coronavirus, the first will be at home, then upon arrival to the event, and then throughout the course of the tournament.

The PLL’s second season was initially set to start on May 29, but now players will partake in a minicamp before the first of the tournament starting July 25. The championship game is currently set to be played on August 9.

Rabil said that the league’s tournament will be called the PLL Championship Series, which can be compared to the champions league in European soccer. Each of the league’s 7 teams will play four randomly decided games over the one week from July 25 to August 2. After that, the teams will be seeded one through seven, with the number one seed getting a first-round bye, and playing the ‘playoffs’ from August 4 to August 9. All 20 games can be watched on the NBC family of networks.