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A former Division I women’s lacrosse player at Georgetown University, Kristen Bandos has helped build a pro league from scratch. As Vice President, Partnership Marketing at the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) she is connecting brands to the sport, to athletes, and raising the profile of the game in the United States and globally.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about the Premier Lacrosse League and your role there.

The PLL is a men’s professional lacrosse league comprised of eight teams of the best lacrosse players in the world. We are a single entity structure, so our front office, which I’m part of, manages all aspects of the league and teams. We operate on a hybrid home/tour-based model, with 14 events from early June to mid-September. I am the VP of Partnership Marketing and my role falls within the larger business development team. My team manages the execution of marketing strategy and revenue development of the PLL’s 30+ sponsorship portfolio.

This is my fourth season with the PLL. I started ahead of the 2021 season, and it’s been an incredible journey since then, having a part in building the league and facilitating what it’s going to look like for many years to come.

When I came to the league, I saw what our co-founders Mike and Paul Rabil were building, and immediately connected with the mission and values that they had been instilling here since day one. It was a no-brainer for me to take the opportunity and join this team and be able to build the league with them.

A lot of what I do on a day-to-day level is navigate the relationships with each of our respective partners and build out sponsorship strategies that connect with our audience and positively impact our partners’ KPIs. We want to make sure that we are consistently overdelivering against their expectations and supporting their ever-evolving marketing strategy. We work to see how we can continue to bring our fans the best experience from our partners as well as support the investment they’re making in our players. We’re activating those brands across our business to grow and scale their investment for the success of the league, and sport, for years to come.

Lacrosse has an active and invested fan base in the US. How do you help sponsors make that connection between their marketing goals and the PLL?

A lot of what we do, especially when we are either pitching or bringing on sponsors, is to elevate the great history and stories in the sport. Lacrosse is the oldest sport in North America, and now, the sport is growing on a global level – Lacrosse is returning to the Olympic stage on home soil for the LA 2028 games. A milestone moment for the growth of the sport that will bring more eyes and fans of lacrosse on sports’ most iconic stage, and we’re working hard to capture that attention and momentum.

We are always thinking about how we can connect more people to the sport because once people watch the game, they tend to fall in love with it. We are continually looking to share the stories surrounding our league, whether it’s at the national level through our partnership with ESPN or being able to tell the individual stories of our players and build their brands as athletes. Our mission is to trailblaze the future of professional sports that is player and fan focused, and I think every day, from the top down, our entire team is facilitating that. How are we thinking creatively or differently so that we are building this league to be a top five sports league in the US? We know the passion and the interest from the fanbase is there. When the league was launched in 2018, there were an estimated 13 million lacrosse fans in the US. Today, data from MRI Simmons shows that the fanbase has grown to 45 million. It’s on us to continue to share that story as well as think creatively about how we can continue to honor the game and showcase our players while we’re building this at the league level.

You speak a lot about honoring the heritage of lacrosse in Native American culture. How have you been able to engage the Native American community in respectful and meaningful ways?

Indigenous and First Nations communities in North America have played different versions of the game for thousands of years as a cultural and religious tradition — these communities see the game as a gift from the creator, and playing these games are viewed as spiritual and physical medicine for the entire community. As the modern game continues to grow, we want to ensure new and old fans are aware of and respect the game’s Indigenous roots. We honor the heritage of lacrosse by continuing to build and deepen relationships with the Indigenous and First Nations communities, leverage our media platforms and partnerships to amplify Indigenous voices, accurate histories, and their contemporary priorities.

A lot of what we’ve done is work with Indigenous cultures to hear their perspective on the game. We offer Indigenous land acknowledgments at each of our games, understanding that we were playing on Indigenous land, and in the front office, we bring in guest speakers regularly to educate our staff, players, and coaches. From a partnership perspective, we collaborated with Native artists and the team at Champion to develop a merchandise capsule with distinct aesthetic styles, hailing from Indigenous communities across North America.

As a former Division I lacrosse player at Georgetown, your college experience certainly helps with your current job at the PLL. But what else from your time as D-I athlete has been has helped you as move into the business side of the sport?

I continue to mentor student-athletes, as well as former athletes who are in graduate school. I always harp on the fact that there are these innate skills that you’ve likely unknowingly learned or built as an athlete, that translate seamlessly into the sports industry or corporate world as a whole. When I was a student-athlete, I had mentors who told me, ‘You have no idea how much you’re learning now and how that’s going to help you in the corporate world.’ And I don’t think I fully grasped that until more recently in my career.

There are a few examples of skills that I think translate pretty much one-to-one from the lacrosse field to the front office, especially in my role at the PLL. The first one is your ability to stay composed under pressure, especially working in the world of live events. Things are going to go wrong, problems will come up, or new opportunities will appear that you need to digest and react to quickly. How are you staying composed, understanding the problem that needs to be solved, and working hand-in-hand with the larger team to execute it? I always think back to lacrosse — there’s two minutes left in the game and you’re the one that has to get the ball to score. You’ve got to be composed. You have to be confident that you’re prepared for that moment and that your team has trust in you.

Another example, which is really a no-brainer, is a team mentality. I think from the top down at the PLL, there is buy-in on the mission and values of building the future of professional sports. There is a team effort whether it’s getting ready for a game day or developing strategy for the next three years. We’re always thinking about how we can bring in other team members, or how something will impact the larger group — from the players to our fans to our sponsors.

Finally, one thing that maybe isn’t always top of mind, but I tell student-athletes this all the time — they are innately built to fail publicly. As an athlete, you don’t win every game. I think there is something to being that person that’s supposed to score the winning goal, and you missed, and you don’t win that game. I’ve never been part of a team that is so creative, smart, thought provoking, and challenging as the team I work with at the PLL. That leads to you sharing ideas that maybe aren’t going to be picked or pitching an idea or a campaign that you thought was going to perform at a level and it didn’t. It doesn’t become a roadblock. It becomes a question of how you react to it, understand what went wrong and plan for the future. I think a lot of that has come from my days on the field and being able to learn those skills from losses.

When you hear the phrase, women in sports, what do you think of what comes to mind?

I think of the different stages of my life as a woman in sports. From the early days of female lacrosse players I was able to watch, and it motivated me to pick up my stick and build my game. I remember going to Northwestern’s championship game during the height of their dynasty and being enthralled with the level they were playing at. It motivated me at an early age to commit myself to the game and strive for success at the collegiate level.

I think of my favorite sports commentators, Holly Rowe and Doris Burke who are just absolute trailblazers. I adore the attitudes they have and the overall performance they bring in covering so many different aspects of the industry.

And I think now in my career, how I get to work with so many women in leadership capacities who are not only elevating the sports industry as a whole but also women’s sports. I think we have this moment of visibility. I feel like I’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years about how women’s sports sponsorships are such an incredible unlock for brands. And it’s been really rewarding to play a small part in the growth and coverage of the women’s lacrosse game as well through Unleashed, the PLL’s women’s lacrosse content and training arm. Earlier this year, we worked with Ticketmaster to put on our first ever women’s lacrosse exhibition in the US, the Unleashed All-Star Game, and recently included some of the best women’s lacrosse pros in the world in the PLL’s All-Star Skills Competition, presented by Better Mortgage. Working with like-minded partners, willing to invest in women’s sports, and the sport of lacrosse as a whole, is certainly rewarding on a personal and professional level.

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Cheri Kempf is a Senior Vice President at Athletes Unlimited, a network of professional women’s sports leagues that launched in 2020 featuring softball, indoor volleyball, basketball, and lacrosse. Kempf oversees broadcasting for all four sports, negotiating media rights deals and managing all aspects of production and game presentation. Prior to Athletes Unlimited, Kempf was Commissioner of National Pro Fastpitch for nearly 15 years and was long at the forefront of women’s fastpitch softball, as a player, instructor, an industry marketing representative and a television sports commentator.  

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Athletes Unlimited has a unique structure. Each sport has a condensed season, all in one location, with weekly drafts by team captains. Along with team wins, player earns points during games, creating individual competition. Can you break down the structure of Athletes Unlimited for the uninitiated?

The primary thing I always like to lead with is for each of the four sports, it’s competition as you know it. If you’re watching a softball game, there’s nothing weird or odd or super different. You’re watching a high-level competition of softball. Behind all that is the unique structure. All the players go into one market. So, for softball, 60 players go into one market for the season and all 60 players go on a leaderboard. The top four players on the leaderboard become captains and draft their teams each week. So, the teams switch every week, and that’s kind of new for a fan.

Additionally, an Athletes Unlimited season is a lot more intense. If you look at a baseball season, for example, it spans over half the year with thousands of games. So, if a team loses, it’s not the end of the world. But for us, our motto is every moment counts. And it really does. Because if I get a double, that’s plus 20, for me. That will shift me on the leaderboard, and ultimately, I get a bonus based on that.

I would describe it as competition as you know it with some really fun, nuanced things going on in the background that, once fans understand it, expands their interest and their opportunities to engage with each sport.

Athletes Unlimited was created with a player-centric model. What does that look like in practice?

To start with, you’re not just building a roster at the beginning of the season and then adjusting at a trade deadline. Every single week there’s a strategy of the kind of team a captain is going to put together. And that’s the essence of Athletes Unlimited – empowering the players. There’s no general manager or club president deciding who is going to be on your team. The players themselves make those choices.

The players’ fingerprints are all over the league. We don’t have GMs and also don’t have coaches per se. Each captain has a facilitator the captain can use in whatever capacity they need. It could be helping to draft, or designing a practice, or game management. They work together, but it’s very heavily influenced by players.

Then each one of our sports has what’s called a player executive committee that is made up of five active players. They touch almost everything. Certainly, they touch anything to do with competition. So, if you were going to change the lengths of the quarters or the breaks between or the number of innings or anything like that, it’s going to the player executive committee.

They look at hotels, talk about venues and host cities. They look at virtually everything that has to do with that sport, and that includes, by and large, selecting the other players who are part of Athletes Unlimited. The players drafted out of college into the league are finalized by the players executive committee. They weren’t drafted by the league and handed to the teams.

Really, from start to finish players are playing a very big role in operations, competition, and what the league looks like.

Last year, a number of Athletes Unlimited basketball games were streamed on the WNBA app. That seems to be an example of the culture of collaboration that is a big part of the organization. Can you talk more about that culture?

It’s unique. The very nature of sports is competition and sometimes it’s even more intense, and certainly sometimes uglier, behind the scenes in the business of sport. I was the commissioner of another professional softball league, National Pro Fastpitch, for over 13 years. And so many people came along and rather than contribute and work with the league, they wanted to tear it down or destroy it and have their own thing.

When (Athletes Unlimited Co-Founder) Jon Patricof, first called me I was the commissioner of that league. Immediately, within a minute of talking with him, I knew this guy was different. He’s not here to destroy us. It’s evident that he understands that if we can both exist, the sport will be stronger for the players that play it. We will grow and expand player opportunities for this generation and the next ones. So, I gave him my attention and my time because I knew he was on the right track. There was no reason not to work with him, because the players were going to win, it was very clear.

I think collaboration is at our core. I think that for our co-founders Jon Patricof and Jonathan Soros, it is their nature to collaborate. I think they’re fair to a fault sometimes in terms of really being open and transparent to people and saying, “We’d like to work with you, because this will make the whole space stronger.”

The WNBA relationship is a prime example of that. We had a director initially in basketball, Ilene Houser, who had good relationships with the WNBA. We immediately from my perspective, started talking about broadcast coverage, what that might look like, and if there was space on their app. They were very open to it, very receptive. Our season takes place when their’s doesn’t, so there is no competition. Again, it’s really a way to amplify and magnify the presence of the athletes, and I think we both get that.

I grew up in team sports. It will always feel good to me to collaborate with people, and it feels good to be around people that are like-minded. At the end of the day, women’s sports are in a in a great place, but it’s not all going to flip overnight. If we can, in some way, strengthen what the WNBA has to offer, and they can certainly in ways strengthen what we have to offer, why wouldn’t we do that?

In February 2024, Athletes Unlimited signed a multi-year rights deal with ESPN. How important is that relationship with ESPN?

Visibility is everything. Exposure is everything. It’s a case of “If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s there to hear it…” For years and years and years, women’s sports have been that tree that fell that no one was there to hear. It’s still majestic and huge and has a big impact, but nobody’s there to hear it. I think that television and mainstream media offer you that exposure to start to make your sport and your players interesting.

I was alive and awake and aware when ESPN carried zero college softball games in the regular season and the Women’s College World Series broadcast was only the championship game and it came on at 2 a.m. Now, ESPN is carrying thousands of games and every second of not just the Women’s College World Series, but the NCAA Tournament field of 64.

What affected that, first, was when softball was added to the 1996 Olympics. It was announced around 1992 that softball would be an Olympic sport for the first time ever. So now softball falls under the NCAA’s Olympic sport category, which means more focus and more money, because those athletes now have somewhere to else to go. They are going to be on the Olympic stage.

Then you saw the Southeastern Conference, which is  one of the most dominant college conferences, add softball. Not only did they add it, but they, had an arms race on stadiums and facilities and venues. So that’s your trickle down – it gets added to the Olympics, it falls under the Olympic sport category, and now all of a sudden, television is interested.

So, ESPN tries it. They stick a toe in the water, put one regional on TV, and the numbers are there. It’s captivating. People aren’t changing the channel. People are starting to talk about this. Then it’s more and more and more to the point it is today where the tournament and the Women’s College World Series is appointment viewing for people.

I was an analyst for ESPN when they were saying, “Look, there are people tuning in that don’t understand the nuts and bolts of this game. Make sure you help them understand.” It was a conscious effort by ESPN, and it succeeded. Monumentally, it succeeded. They helped people be exposed to the sport, and by doing that people fell in love with it. They were invested. That’s how it works.

All of a sudden everybody hears the tree crash.

What do you think needs to happen to sustain the current popularity of women’s sports and expand it even further?

It’s no different than it ever has been. We need corporate America to know that our advertising spots are important. The 30-second spots in our shows, our in-game features or in-game mentions are worth spending your time and your money on. That’s for starters,

There needs to be that investment from the networks to say, we’re not going to give you the windows that are leftover. We’re going to give you some good windows. We’re going to give you some primetime and we’re going to give you a good lead-in.

 If you look at the Big Ten Network this year, they had some amazing numbers on women’s volleyball. You know what they did? They’d go to a volleyball match out of a football game. So, you have this audience that’s already watching. The game ends and they toss it to the volleyball game and you retain some of that audience. That’s a big difference than having a taped program, with very few people watching or interested in, leading into your women’s game. TV windows are important and your windows matter.

I also think people cannot say “Oh, we made it,” and ease up. We have to keep going. We have to keep elevating stars. What we should all learn from Caitlin Clark is that all boats rise when a star comes along. I think you have to lean into stars.

We have to keep the pedal down, and corporate America and network television are critical elements.

What advice would you give to young women who want who want a career in sports?

Well, I love this question, because there’s so much going on in sports behind the scenes. As these leagues pop up, guess what, there’s a whole element of management and operations that are coming with these leagues. Everything from in-venue operations to the technical aspects of scoring and operating video boards, to broadcasting and being able to produce. Most people gravitate to on-air talent, but there’s so many opportunities. I think women have a propensity for storytelling, do it well and understand what resonates and how you grow an audience just by telling interesting, touching moving things about people.

We talk about the sports entertainment business, and we talk a lot about the athletes, but I’m telling you television production is also a very male dominated industry. In 30 years of working in broadcasting and production, I can still count on one hand, the number of times I’ve ever had a female director and producer. I’d love to see more of it. I’d love to have the person who’s producing graphics, deciding what’s interesting, what should we have in the lower thirds of your TV screen, be a woman.

I don’t think a lot of people understand the depth of opportunities, career wise, that exist in sports and sports broadcasting, and I love to expose girls to those opportunities.

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The Olympics may happen once every four years, but the work of athletes and reporters never stops. Currently the Olympics reporter for Sports Business Journal, Rachel Axon is preparing to cover her sixth Olympic Games at Paris in 2024. She spent more than 10 years at USA Today as an Olympics reporter and sports investigative reporter, working extensively on an award-winning series on Title IX. She is an avid runner and a graduate of St. Bonaventure University.

The following discussion has been edited for length and clarity:

You were part of a team of reporters at USA Today that produced an award-winning series about Title IX in 2022. What were some of the most surprising things you found in that research?

As reporters, we’re dealing with publicly available data at public schools, but the information that a lawsuit could bring forth, or that the federal government’s Department of Education could bring forth in an investigation, is beyond what we could get. So, if we have kind of this lower level of access and are still finding significant amounts of schools falling short of providing opportunities for girls and women – the scholarship requirement perhaps was the clearest bright line where there were issues – then that really spoke to there being a problem.

The other thing that was surprising was how much schools tried to substitute progress for equity. And by that, I mean, we would go through the data, talk to people, and find schools where [non-compliance with Title IX] seemed like a pretty big issue. The explanation almost always went back to, “we’re doing better.” Fundamentally that’s what they’re saying, but better is not equitable. It’s just not it. We were very cautious about saying if a school complied with, or didn’t comply with, the law, because the Office for Civil Rights may reach a determination that we couldn’t. But I 100 percent believe we raised important issues and pointed out things that have clearly been problems for a long time. 

Some of the editors on this project did not have a background in sports or in Title IX, so we would get questions like, “Why would colleges do it this way?” And the thing I would always go back to explaining is the system was never made for women. We had a system that for decades and decades and decades was made for male athletes. When Title IX came along, it forced athletic programs to make adjustments.

If you were building an athletic program from the ground up, you would do it very differently, right? If you’re starting at zero, and you knew this was one of the mandates on your athletic department, decisions would be different. But the growth of women’s sports came along at a time where priorities were already set and to a large degree, those priorities have not changed.

What do you see as of the biggest opportunities for women’s sports right now? And how can fans and businesses support those opportunities?

I would put it in two buckets – NIL (Name Image Likeness) and Olympic sports.

If we look at where the concentration of investment in women’s sports has been, for decades and decades, it was tennis and golf on the professional level. They are closer to equitable, because they’ve had much longer history, with the caveat being that history is largely based on notions that those are more feminine and acceptable sports. Today, I would say, you have basketball and soccer where the support is concentrated.

Now look at opportunities in the NIL space for college athletes and those are mostly concentrated to male athletes. There’s a looming question about Title IX and how this applies to what schools do, so NIL is an evolving thing. But the money is going to male athletes predominantly. At the same time, there is real growth and popularity around women’s sports. You look at what Nebraska volleyball did to pack a football stadium. There was a recent year where the College Softball World Series had better TV ratings than the College Baseball World Series.

Bridging that disconnect between the real growth and popularity of those college sports and where the NIL money is going is a big opportunity.

The other is the Olympics. And one of the things I like about covering the Olympics is it feels like where Title IX has come to blossom because there’s so much more equity. I would not say this universally. This is not true of every country in the world, and I think Title IX makes the U.S. unique in this regard. Honestly, this is why the Americans have had such an edge. But there’s still a lot of room in women’s Olympic sports, either with individual athletes or with the national governing bodies, where a small amount of investment might make a huge difference. We’re not talking $50 million, but a million dollars might make a huge difference in developing talent and bridging that gap for places that could be cleared and be really super meaningful.

Going to the Olympics is a dream for so many people – from athletes to journalists to marketers. You’re getting ready to cover your sixth Olympics in Paris in 2024. Can you give us a little peek behind the curtain of what it’s like?

Covering the Olympics is the most exciting and exhausting experience I can imagine in sports journalism. There’s literally nothing like it in the volume of what’s going on around you, the volume of work. The demands are for three weeks straight. But what I love is the opportunity behind it.

I’ve done it both ways where I’ve gone with a specific sport to cover and that’s really helpful because you build up sources. You build up knowledge and it helps you to find and tell stories. I’ve been lucky in that regard. I’ve done more winter than summer games and freeskiing and snowboarding were my sports where it’s the X Games kids who are in a halfpipe and slopestyle courses. And those are sports where the Americans are very good, so I was never lacking for good stories about these life-changing moments.

Sometimes, you just get dropped in to cover events. In Tokyo, I covered a lot of gymnastics but also was floating around and was dropped in to cover fencing. I never covered the sport of fencing before in my life and suddenly, I’m taking a crash course. What are the rules? How does this work? Who is good? Who are the medal contenders? You’re trying to find and tell stories and it’s really exhilarating as a journalist. It’s a lot of like adrenaline. You’re on deadline. You’re running around. You’re not sleeping. I mean, 18-hour days are frighteningly common.

In terms of memorable moments, there’s been a ton. My first Olympics was in Sochi, and we worked it out with one of the athletes, freeskier David Wise, to do a story on what the 24 hours are like after you win a medal. He won the gold medal in the halfpipe, and he let me shadow him. So, he got done and I’m going down the mountain with him, going to NBC and other interviews. Then there was a point where we are all in a hotel room – me, his wife, his agent, and some other people – and one of his sponsors had prepared a congratulatory video that was narrated by Morgan Freeman. To see this athlete who’s the best at what he does, but relatively obscure to the rest of the world, have this gold medal moment and then it sinks in, “Oh my gosh, my life is different! Morgan Freeman congratulating me.” I get emotional thinking about it now because you are there at these moments where people’s lives are changing.

Looking at Paris 2024, what are some of the key moments or storylines we should pay attention to?

I think the U.S. women are going to lead that team again. I think just about every Olympics since London, the U.S. women lead the medal count internally and that if they were their own country, would have been about fifth at some of those Summer Olympics. I think Paris will probably be even better if you look at the strength of the team. Women’s water polo has won the last three golds.  Simone Biles has not yet committed but her gymnastics are just beautiful right now. Katie Ledecky is still in the pool. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is the world record holder in the 400 hurdles. As a runner myself, I’m particularly interested in the women’s distance events and the U.S. women improving there after Molly Seidel got a marathon medal in Tokyo. I am sure there will be many memorable moments by American men, but I think the most solid prediction that I could make would be that the U.S. women will lead the way again for them.

In this changing media landscape, what advice would you give to young women looking to get into sports journalism?

Well, first, welcome. It is a difficult time for our industry, but to me, this is always a worthwhile profession because you get the opportunity to tell stories, to reveal things, to uncover things, to entertain people, to share the human condition. That said, there are ample opportunities.

To get those first few jobs, I would say, get the reps early. And there’s no such thing too early. I have high school students who reach out to me because they’re trying to get stories published. If you’re in college, do the internships, do extra outside of class in whatever path you’re going in, whether it’s broadcast, or podcasting, or print. Get as many reps as you can. I think that really helped set me apart and prepared me when I was coming out of college.

I would say be as versatile as you can be. The storytelling will be the same and your ethics and requirements as a journalist don’t change. But I’ve been in this business long enough to see many trends come and go. “We’re going to pivot to video,” or “We’re going to post on Facebook.” Look at what Twitter meant to journalism and what it’s become now as X. Being versatile and able to take your reporting skills and apply them in various media is of critical importance. You need to continue to learn and grow as you’re doing it.

The other thing I would say, don’t be afraid to reach out to people. When I was in college, one of my professors, John Hanchette, had worked at USA TODAY. I was doing my honors thesis, and he said, “Oh, reach out to these reporters.” And I was like, they’re not gonna give me the time of day. Why would they? Why would they talk to me? One of those reporters was Erik Brady, who is one of the most delightful humans on this planet and was so giving of his time and perspective. It really affected me in terms of understanding that we journalists want to help. So, I would say don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help. If you see someone doing what you want to do, drop them an email. I will also plug the Association for Women in Sports Media, which is a great organization and has nothing but women in this business who are willing to help because as much progress as we have made, we are still a minority. Having those resources to lean on and to help build each other up, I think is one of the best parts about being in this profession.