Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Fate of a Sport’ on Hulu, the Story of Two Brothers’ Drive to Establish Lacrosse as America’s Next Professional Sport

Lacrosse might be considered a niche sport by many, but within that niche, Paul Rabil was considered the Michael Jordan of the sport. He racked up endorsement deals and YouTube views, but his dream was to establish lacrosse as America’s next big professional sport. In Fate of a Sport, an ESPN Films documentary now airing on Hulu, we see Rabil’s decade-plus struggle to get the sport taken seriously.

FATE OF A SPORT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s an uphill struggle to establish any new sports league. It’s all the more difficult when the sport is seen by many as a niche sport, the province of prep schools and elite colleges. But that didn’t deter Paul Rabil, who dreamed of establishing Premier League Lacrosse as a viable professional league. He’d seen where others had failed before, and was determined not to; in Fate of a Sport we see his efforts to make his dream come true.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Fate of a Sport has the familiar DNA of other ESPN-helmed documentaries, bearing a similar structure and production style to many of the Worldwide Leader in Sports’ other outputs, such as the 30 For 30 series of films.

Performance Worth Watching: Rabil’s the star of the show here, but there’s important context brought in by a number of prominent voices in the world of sports, from ESPN sportswriters and podcasters to experienced figures from the world of lacrosse. This is Rabil’s story, but he’s not telling it all alone.

Memorable Dialogue: “There’s a beautiful history to the game,” actor and former college lacrosse player Jeffrey Wright notes, “Lacrosse is just slashing, full on, you’ve just gotta go out there and survive the madness.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: It might sound like a pipe dream to turn lacrosse into a professional sport, but Paul Rabil wasn’t the first to try. Major League Lacrosse was founded in 2001 and carried on for two decades, but it was plagued by the problems of a sports startup. Players were paid so little that nearly all of them had to maintain day jobs in addition to their sporting career. But Paul Rabil–one of the biggest names in the sport today–was determined to change that paradigm. He was determined to bring the sport the respect he thought it deserved, to sit alongside football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer as a real North American professional sport.

The same problems that held back Major League Lacrosse, including the widespread perception of lacrosse–an adaptation of a Native American game that’s actually the oldest sport still played in the Americas–is a “white boy” game, the province of frat boys at elite private Northeastern colleges, something that the public at large couldn’t relate to.

Rabil saw the appeal of the game–a fast-paced, high-intensity game that’s constantly moving like soccer, has offensive strategy that compares to basketball and violence that compares to football–as something that could capture the public’s imagination.

His dream wasn’t happening in a vacuum, though–despite the flaws he saw in Major League Lacrosse’s model, that league still existed at the time he sought to launch his own Premier Lacrosse League, meaning that he was facing intense competition not just for the limited viewerbase, but also for the players he’d need to succeed. “Why would you launch anything and start with enemies?”, speculates Brendan Kelly, the owner of the Chesapeake Bayhawks, a team in the existing MLL, “You’re just dividing… eliminating half your supporters.”

This struggle–both between the existing MLL and Rabil’s nascent PLL and between success and irrelevance for the sport at large–forms the dramatic backbone of Fate of a Sport. There’s a small window for the sport to succeed on a large scale, and Rabil might be the visionary who brings it to the promised land, or the wrench that jams up the whole machine.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Fate of a Sport is a smart, capably-crafted documentary that tells its story well, but–much like Rabil found–if you’re not already a lacrosse fan, it’s probably not going to hold much interest for you.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky who publishes the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter.