Having issues receiving player lists form Plugin Channels. Please Help!

I'm using the BungeeCord plugin. But I don't know why I'm getting the error that I'm getting.
Here's the variable declarations:

Code:

public static String server = null;
public static String[] playerList = null;

Here's the registering of Outgoing and Incoming Plugin channels in the onEnable method:

Code:

Bukkit.getMessenger().registerOutgoingPluginChannel(this, "BungeeCord");
        Bukkit.getMessenger().registerIncomingPluginChannel(this, "BungeeCord", this);

Here'e the onPluginMessageReceived method:

Code:

@Override
    public void onPluginMessageReceived(String channel, Player player, byte[] message){
           ByteArrayDataInput i = ByteStreams.newDataInput(message);
           String subchannel = i.readUTF();
        if (subchannel.equals("PlayerList")) {
            server = i.readUTF();
            playerList = i.readUTF().split(", ");
            player.sendMessage("so far so good");
        }
    }

Here's where I give the output stream and call the subchannel:

Code:

String msg = new String("string");
        
            ByteArrayDataOutput out = ByteStreams.newDataOutput();
        
            out.writeUTF("PlayerList");
            out.writeUTF("ALL");
        
            for(String staff : playerList){
                if(player.hasPermission("requests.recieve")){
                
                    try{
                        out.writeUTF("Message");
                        out.writeUTF(staff);
                        out.writeUTF(msg);
                    }catch(Exception e){}
                }
            }

It gives me a NullPointerException at the line that contains the "for" loop. Probably because playerList is empty. But I don't know why it's empty. Please help.