They don’t matter, that’s the thing. They can’t even promote themselves properly or celebrate the history they claim is so rich and vibrant. They have no way to monetize the assets (speaking as a form VP for one of said leagues). It’s great lacrosse. No one is denying that - but diehards need to understand how microscopically insignificant senior lacrosse is in the landscape. People in the communities those teams are housed in often don’t even know they’re there - “oh we have a lacrosse team”… usually followed by “and what’s lacrosse?”
Here comes, “ya, but what about”.
Understanding that players hold leverage when they have multiple sources of revenue, be it small, and additional points of negotiation “ya I had a shit NLL season but I led Sr A in XYZ” skews the economic balance of a league/business.
Until that economic model is fixed multimillion dollars deals don’t have a foundation to exist on. Because the assets to which the NLL product is made is also used by other leagues/businesses.
Fix that, million dollar contracts happen quicker than you think. But a lot of dinosaurs will be piss and light up Facebook groups with comments. No one to blames but themselves.