The Premier Lacrosse League is borrowing from the NHL’s playbook, launching a 4 Nations Face-Off of its own. The PLL, along with its Women’s Lacrosse League, will create the four-country Lexus Global Lacrosse Games tournament.
The launch comes off the back of a wildly successful recent run of international tournaments in major sports.
The NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off in February 2025 was an enormous win for both the NHL and ESPN. The tournament including the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Finland brought in record ratings; the contentious final between the two North American powerhouses became the most-watched NHL Game in U.S. history, handing ESPN the record for the NHL’s biggest U.S. broadcast ever. March’s World Baseball Classic, too, drew huge ratings, including a staggering 10.8 million viewers for the final on Fox, breaking a record for the event.
At the Connecticut stop of the PLL’s touring season, league cofounder and president Paul Rabil told Front Office Sports that it took direct cues from those two tournaments to create its own international event sanctioned by lacrosse’s national and global governing bodies.
The significantly smaller sport of lacrosse will have to see if it can ride the same wave.
