Starting a league in a fringe sport always has been akin to bench-pressing 300 pounds with one hand. The landscape is littered with carcasses of failed leagues, and this is an especially perilous time for newcomers. With the economy slowing, advertisers are reconsidering commitments in an already crowded market, and attendance in many sports is dropping after a decade-long boom.

"Everyone's holding on to their checkbooks right now," says Mr Jim Andrews, vice-president of IEG in Chicago, which tracks sports sponsorships. "It makes an already difficult job that much more difficult."

Just last month, the 55-year-old Continental Basketball Association, the nation's oldest minor basketball league, folded amid financial turmoil. The Women's Professional Softball League last week cancelled its 2001 season. Minor-league hockey, which expanded ambitiously in the 1990s, is in a period of retrenchment, with teams shutting down and resale prices plummeting.

Then there's the XFL, the overhyped football joint venture of World Wrestling Federation Entertainment and General Electric's NBC, which has seen network ratings shrink by 75 per cent in five weeks.

Mr Steinfeld, 43 years old, is hoping a modest business plan and an untapped market of lacrosse enthusiasts will help Major League Lacrosse avoid the fate of other minor leagues. A former high-school lacrosse player, Mr Steinfeld decided to start a league three years ago after reading a magazine article about Mr Dave Morrow, founder of equipment maker Warrior Lacrosse.Mr Steinfeld recruited the 29-year-old Mr Morrow as a partner. He also added Mr Timothy Robertson, the son of televangelist Mr Pat Robertson and former chief executive of the Family Channel. SFX Entertainment, the big New York media and marketing agency, also is on board. Six local investors paid $1.6 million for a team and a share of the league'sownership.So far, the league has landed three national sponsors - Anheuser-Busch's Bud Light brand, Yahoo! and PepsiCo's SoBe Beverages - and a deal for five games to be shown nationally on the Fox Sports Net cable network."The goal here is to expand the brand, expand the sport of lacrosse," Mr Steinfeld says. "We know how difficult it is with start-up leagues. We're all witnessing the XFL."The new league is moving cautiously. Its teams are based on the lacrosse-friendly East Coast, in Baltimore; Boston; Bridgeport, Conn.; Montclair, N.J.; Rochester, N.Y.; and Islip, N.Y., on Long Island. The clubs will play at minor-league baseball or small college stadiums, which will ensure that attendance doesn't seem too small but also will give the games a distinctly bush-league feel.One benefit: As the only outdoor lacrosse league - an indoor league plays in the winter - it will feature the world's best players, who will make about $7,500 to $30,000 for a 14-game season.For sponsors and suppliers, even if the league fails, their financial exposure is relatively limited. The total of their investments in the league is about $1.5 million a year in cash, equipment and advertising. The companies will receive stadium signage, logos on uniforms and television ads in exchange for some cash, local marketing and Internet advertising. SoBe gets an additional perk: The Long Island team is nicknamed the Lizards and uses the same dueling-lizards logo as the drink company."The good thing for sponsors is they hold all the cards in these start-up leagues," says Mr Peter Land, who heads sports marketing at Edelman Public Relations in New York. "They know the leagues wouldn't exist without their support."The lacrosse sponsors want to tap into the sport's young, male, suburban demographic. SoBe has linked its brand to extreme sports such as skateboarding and snowboarding. Anheuser-Busch says lacrosse matches the company's target audience of men 21 to 34 years old. "Those are our core consumers," says Ms Kathy Casso, an Anheuser-Busch senior manager for sports marketing.Still, three sponsors isn't many, and the league's ownership ranks are dominated by pre-existing lacrosse lovers but inexperienced sports-team operators; sports mogul Lamar Hunt turned down a franchise for Columbus, Ohio, where he operates a successful team in Major League Soccer.Ultimately, the league will need to meet an attendance goal of 5,000 fans per game and generate enough TV viewers to keep sponsorshappy."Everybody thinks they know sports," says Mr Robert Caporale, chairman of Game Plan, a Boston sports consultancy. "But you can learn some awfully hard, tough lessons in thebusiness."- The Wall Street Journal