Lacrosse is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, but professional players aren’t seeing the same growth in their paychecks. Professional athletes in major sports are making millions of dollars each year, while players in the Premier Lacrosse League earn significantly less.
Using the 2026 salary cap and team roster size, the average PLL players’ salary is estimated to be approximately $29,400 while the average NBA salary is $12.1 million and median is about $6 million. This large difference in pay raises the question of why professional athletes in different sports have such different salaries.
First, you need to look at demand. Professional athletes are paid from the demand for the product they help produce. In professional sports, the product is entertainment. When more people stream games, buy tickets, purchase merchandise, and follow a league, teams generate more revenue and have more money to pay their players. Although the PLL is relatively new, the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL have larger fan bases, creating much greater demand for games and players.
Media revenue also plays a major role in the wage gap. Television and streaming contracts provide professional sports leagues immense amounts of money. Major sports leagues have millions of viewers and can access extremely valuable media-rights agreements. These contracts provide teams with revenue to pay players. The PLL, on the other hand, has a much smaller television audience and fewer contracts, meaning less revenue to distribute to players. In fact only a few games during the 2026 season were nationally televised as they were competing with the NFL and MLB for viewership. This makes it difficult to attract the same amount of advertising and broadcasting revenue as larger professional sports.
Another factor affecting player salaries is the revenue each player helps generate for the league. The demand for labor is influenced by a worker’s marginal revenue product, or the additional revenue that worker creates. In the NBA, Lebron James helps generate billions of dollars in revenue because he is known world-wide and people want to buy his merchandise and watch him play. PLL players are also highly skilled athletes, but they play in a market that generates much less revenue. Therefore, the difference in salaries largely reflects the economic value each league can generate.
Overall, the difference between PLL salaries and the salaries of other professional sports teams can be explained by lower demand for its product, less media coverage and revenue, and a smaller consumer market than the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL. While lacrosse continues to grow, it has not yet generated the same level of revenue as other leagues. As the PLL gains more fans, expands its media presence, and grows its business, the demand for professional lacrosse could increase. If so, teams will have more revenue to pay their players.
