Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 12/17/09

    The Ivy League is trying to sell a sponsorship to pay for television production for its inaugural lacrosse championships this spring, according to a report in Bloomberg News Service.

    The league announced in January that it would hold four-team tournaments to decide its automatic berths for the NCAA lacrosse championships. In previous years, the regular-season champion earned the berth.

    The league is hoping that a sponsor would offset the cost – estimated at $50,000 – of putting its tourneys on TV, the report said. Currently, there is no TV contract.

    “We don’t have a budget to buy the television time,” said Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris in the report. “So the sponsor’s money essentially goes to pay the television production costs, and we’ll get some ads to sell during the broadcast.”

    Harris said in the report that the goal behind televising the lacrosse championships is to promote university initiatives and to tell stories about the successes of Ivy League student-athletes. “It helps promote our message that we offer a good athletic experience at the Division I level for academically gifted students,” Harris said.

    The Ivy League tournaments will be held on April 30 and May 2 (women) and May 7 and 9 (men).