The Premier Lacrosse League has raised more than $200 million since it first disrupted—then fully redefined—professional lacrosse in America. Co-founder Paul Rabil says its latest round, a $100 million Series E, may be the last.

“With where we’re at now, the intention is to stabilize the business with this capital and find ways that we can accelerate growth,” Rabil told Sportico in an interview. “We share in the sentiment that we shouldn’t raise any more capital unless there is a clear, designated growth opportunity—and at this stage that’s usually through some form of M&A.”

The PLL on Tuesday announced the $100 million round, led by Ares funds and billionaire Joe Tsai, one of the sport’s most prominent business backers. Media partner ESPN is contributing money too, as are a number of other prominent names—actors Glen Powell and Rob Mac, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett’s Next 3, and David Blitzer, via his Bolt Ventures family office.

Rabil, who declined to provide financial specifics, said the PLL’s valuation has grown steadily since he and his brother Michael raised a roughly $3 million seed round in early 2018. Their most recent financing, the Series D, was announced in 2022. Since then, the organizers of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles announced they would add a smaller, six-on-six version of lacrosse to the official program.

“We’re in a critical growth window right now,” Rabil said of PLL. “With the Olympics coming in 2028, and more than 3 billion people having access to the game, it will amount to the greatest exposure lacrosse has ever had. Our renewed media rights deal with ESPN; the launch of the Women’s Lacrosse League (WLL). This capital helps us accelerate while all those forces are aligned.”

More specifically, Rabil said the money will go toward a number of PLL initiatives. They include the WLL—which debuted in 2025—the group’s youth lacrosse initiatives, digital storytelling, broader media distribution and a larger stable of commercial partners. The bulk of the PLL’s revenue right now comes via national media and sponsorship, plus ticket sales. The league’s eight teams all have geographic homes but for now still play a tour-based schedule.

While a number of groups, including Tsai, have invested multiple times in PLL, Rabil said that with each funding round the group typically sought a leading role from a new banker. That’s been Raine Group, Tsai, Arctos Partners, the Chernin Group, and now Ares. Tsai’s latest investment comes a few weeks after the Brooklyn Nets owner was inducted into the PLL’s Professional Lacrosse Hall of Fame as its first “contributor.”

The official announcement for the Series E said Powell, who played lacrosse as a youth in Austin, will serve as a “creative advisor” to the PLL and “help bring the first PLL and WLL teams to Texas.” Asked about that last line, and whether it indicated a shift toward the independently owned franchises that are part of PLL’s long-term future, Rabil was noncommittal.

“There needs to be a Texas team in the PLL and [Glen] is going to be a guidance force and aggregator of that community,” he said.

That said, the plan is still for the PLL and WLL to, at some point soon, transition to a model where individual teams can be purchased by outsiders. That may look something like SailGP, which just finished that process earlier this year.

“It would be smart for us to try to align [that process] around the Olympic window and the momentum around lacrosse,” Rabil said.