How the Premier Lacrosse League created $10M+ sponsorship opportunities in 10 months
"It's working - and it's an inexpensive way to get way more leverage out of my time."
Challenge
The PLL sells 7-figure sponsorships in a market where every buyer knows every seller - and one bad message can burn a bridge.
The Premier Lacrosse League is the top professional lacrosse league in America - eight teams, an ESPN media deal, 48 million fans, and one of the fastest-growing sports leagues in the country. Sponsorship is a major revenue driver: $500K-to-$5M brand partnerships sold by Chief Commercial Officer Matty Lee and a three-person sales team.
Sponsorship is a small, relationship-driven world, so bad outreach gets noticed. Matty had tried an AI outbound tool before, but shut it down when the copy wasn’t good enough to put his name on. And as a C-suite seller running his own outreach, staying on top of follow-up was always a challenge.
Matty needed a way to expand his sponsorship pipeline beyond the usual brands without sacrificing the personal touch. The goal was simple: find new companies with real sponsorship budget, run the outreach through his own profile, and make every message feel like it actually came from him.
"The good and the bad news is that our leads are not hiding. Because it's a smaller pool of buyers, we just have to be really buttoned up with that outreach to make sure that we don't burn a bridge."
Solution
Uptown ran outbound through Matty’s own profile, targeting CMOs and sponsorship buyers without compromising the relationships he already had.
Uptown built a focused audience of CMOs and VPs of brand and sponsorship at $50M+ companies, while excluding existing partners and protected categories. Every connection request was sent by hand from Matty’s profile, and the messaging was written with him to make sure it sounded like him. When someone raised their hand, the lead went straight to Slack with the context his team needed to take over.
Uptown worked with Matty to:
- Build a buyers-only audience of CMOs and sponsorship decision makers at $50M+ brands, with partner-category exclusions protecting existing deals
- Send every request by hand from his profile, with messaging he approved line by line
- Deliver every positive response to Slack with context, so his sellers could take over and book the meeting
- Re-engage the growing network around major league announcements and commercial moments
Uptown gave Matty a new channel for reaching brands outside the sponsorship circles he and his team were already working.
"This is like totally blue ocean - people that other sponsorship teams are not finding. The good news is we lack competition in a lot of these conversations."
Results
Seventy-one sponsorship buyers raised their hands - creating 58 new brand opportunities in ten months.
LinkedIn gave Matty and his team warm conversations with brand leaders they weren’t already talking to. Over ten months, 71 CMOs and VPs of Brand & Sponsorship responded positively, creating 58 named opportunities across Fortune 1000 brands.
A commercial space company moved to proposal after a single LinkedIn message. Another global consulting firm attended a PLL game and became an internal champion for the partnership.
During the engagement:
- $10M+ in sponsorship opportunities entered PLLs pipeline
- 71 CMOs and VPs of Brand & Sponsorship responded positively over 10 months
- 58 sponsorship opportunities entered the pipeline
- Matty added more than 1,600 relevant connections to a network the league can continue to re-engage
When PLL’s CEO asked Matty where the leads were coming from, Uptown was the answer.
"He [our CEO] always wants to know where leads are from, and you guys have gotten credit for that. I've told him this is working, and it's an inexpensive way to get way more leverage out of my time."
