She’s Got Next: Kristen Bandos

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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