The Boston Breakers didn’t die for this.
Six years after the Breakers, the earlier try at an NWSL membership in Boston was shuttered, its gamers scattered by way of a dispersal draft, and a historical past stretching again to the wake of the 1999 World Cup and the rise of WUSA delivered to a tragic conclusion, The second try at a first-division franchise has its new identify and membership colours.
The fifteenth NWSL group, introduced in September 2023 as one among two enlargement groups becoming a member of the league in 2026, can be known as BOS Nation FC . The possession group introduced the identify and membership’s colours by way of a advertising marketing campaign centered on the concept of ”Too Many Balls.”
Tuesday’s launch was official affirmation of a report from CBS’s Sandra Herrera that had dropped Monday to a lot rapid and overwhelmingly adverse response, together with by some who known as the “Too Many Balls” marketing campaign transphobic.
However nobody may have been ready for the announcement video.
Getting into: BOS Nation FC ⚽️
Thanks @Patriots , @RedSox , @NHLBruins , @celtics , and @NERevolution. The subsequent chapter of Boston sports activities begins now 💪 pic.twitter.com/2DMtsvUc7k
— NWSL Boston (@NWSLBoston) October 15, 2024
Sometime, they’ll examine this group launch as a case examine of what not to do in advertising lessons. They’ll run that video, and a pupil will increase his or her hand, and maybe query, “Did they actually use the phrase ‘goat balls’ in a video launching a girls’s soccer group?”
Forks. Sure, they did. It’s by some means not the worst ingredient of the video, simply its most baffling.
They’re gonna delete that video….proper???
— Bethany Balcer (@bethanybalcer) October 15, 2024
On Wednesday, the membership issued a press release saying it “missed the mark” in its model launch marketing campaign and apologized to the LGBTQ+ neighborhood and to the trans neighborhood extra particularly.
“We’re proud to be a part of probably the most inclusive sports activities league on the earth and are dedicated to upholding the unifying values that outline the NWSL and our membership,” the membership mentioned. “Thanks to all who’ve held us accountable by calling for us to do higher. “We hear you and we’ll, collectively.”
From us to you. pic.twitter.com/ASHFHltb5n
— NWSL Boston (@NWSLBoston) October 16, 2024
Between the identify and marketing campaign, that is the worst NWSL launch I’ve ever seen within the historical past of the league. It could be the worst model launch I’ve ever seen in American soccer, though there are another universally detested rebrands that may put up a combat. MLS specifically excels for groups rebranding, then needing to right away rebrand once more (see: the Chicago Fireplace and my favourite, Membership de Foot Montréal ).
However as a Masshole and somebody who has an intensive historical past straight with Boston girls’s professional soccer throughout a number of leagues… Boston, you’re embarrassing me in entrance of my pals. Cease it. Please .
Essentially the most insulting half is how a lot time they’ve needed to launch one thing this unhealthy. The group was formally introduced in September 2023 . Over a 12 months later, and that is the end result? Truthfully, at this level, we ought to be grateful they weren’t ready to drop the brand new crest as a result of not less than will probably be much less work for them to do another time.
Bos Nation FC is the @nwsl’s fifteenth enlargement group, slated to start out competing within the 2026 season.
Controlling proprietor Jennifer Epstein and investor @ElizabethBanks share why they imagine now’s the time to convey girls’s soccer to Massachusetts: “Girls’s sports activities are peaking.” pic.twitter.com/GPwe4raT60
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) October 15, 2024
As has been defined many instances, together with on their launch on CBS’s morning present, BOS Nation is an anagram of Bostonian. This clarification doesn’t assist justify the identify alternative — setting apart the inherent paradox of 1 metropolis’s group by some means being known as a nation (difficult additional by the league itself utilizing “nationwide” in addition to the USWNT, however I concern these conversations had been by no means had) .
Anagrams aren’t precisely needle-movers in terms of getting potential followers on board with a brand new group identification, however they had been so near one thing that may have labored as a central idea to construct round: the Bostonian.
The membership web site explains the idea as such: “It’s an origin story. An identification. A badge of honor. And a title worn proudly by hundreds of thousands throughout 23 neighborhoods and 48.4 sq. miles.”
If that is the inspiration upon which your new membership identification stays, then why not go together with the Bostonians because the identify or Bostonian Soccer Membership? Maybe it’s too easy and would simply get misplaced in search outcomes, however these issues are simpler to unravel than what the group is going through.
“The place sarcasm is the native language. A 3 greenback and 48 cent cup of espresso is the meals of alternative,” that part continues. Who is that this for? As a result of copy like that isn’t written for Bostonians or Massholes and even New Englanders — your supposed viewers and buyer base.
There’s simply a lot happening with this launch past the issues with the identify. Maintain studying the web site, and there’s the Too Many Balls marketing campaign, however there’s additionally a bunch of slogans, like “WE ARE THE MANY,” and “COMMONWEALTH, MEET NATION.” All the pieces is making an attempt so exhausting. All of it seems like step one of ideation, the place you throw one million concepts up on a board earlier than whittling them down to at least one that works. (And “we’re the numerous” turns into ” be the numerous ” in terms of merchandise for no comprehensible cause.)
The season-ticket deposit web page informs potential patrons that they shouldn’t miss rivalry video games in opposition to Gotham or Angel Metropolis. How can a group that gained’t take the sphere till 2026 have rivals? Definitely there are historic rivalries in males’s sports activities between Boston and New York or Boston and Los Angeles, however to faux like these will robotically carry over into the NWSL as soon as once more speaks to the elemental misunderstanding of BOS NATION FC and its strategy to the tradition of girls’s soccer. A tradition, that ought to be mentioned, already exists in Boston, because of a protracted historical past throughout three skilled leagues courting again to 2001.
For me, the Too Many Balls marketing campaign’s tone falls effectively in need of the cheek they had been in search of, however there’s a extra problematic ingredient. Seattle Reign’s Quinn commented on the NWSL’s submit of the marketing campaign launch video, then their authentic remark was hidden.
“Calling out transphobia shouldn’t be hidden!” they wrote . “This doesn’t signify the league and is such poor messaging.”
And at Tuesday’s occasion to have fun the launch, one fan introduced an indication that mentioned there was no room for transphobia within the league.
“The entire intent behind the model was to be inclusive, and so we take that very significantly. And I’d look ahead to speaking to that participant and pondering by means of why this made them really feel that method,” controlling proprietor Jennifer Epstein advised reporters on the occasion on Tuesday.
I perceive the urgency to differentiate this group from the Boston Breakers as a brand new group and a brand new model. However the erasure of different present girls’s sports activities groups taking part in in Boston is yet one more alarming signal that this group is strolling into an area it doesn’t perceive.
As a Massachusetts native, I actually need @NWSLBoston to succeed. I additionally need to shout out @PWHL_Boston, @BeantownRFC, and @GoRenegades as present girls’s professional sports activities groups right here to assist!
— Samantha Mewis (@sammymewy) October 15, 2024
Once more, with layers upon layers of frustration over this obvious finish product — there are such a lot of specialists, gamers and different stakeholders who may have helped them understand why this was such a foul thought.
Hear me out, latest NWSL retirees get to be in control of the following enlargement group. Would crush, beginning with the identify
— Tori Huster (@torihuster) October 15, 2024
“Lots of us performed for or in opposition to the Breakers or went to video games. A few of us grew up in New England; a few of us (like me) lived in Boston,” NWSL Gamers Affiliation director Meghann Burke responded when requested for her response to the launch, saying that Boston is already primed with girls’s soccer followers and sports activities followers normally.
“The city and the gamers who will signify them deserve a lot extra,” Burke continued. “With the work that has gone into laying a powerful basis for Boston’s 2026 launch, I actually didn’t understand this group to be so unserious. I’m holding out hope that that is an elaborate and ingenious joke and that the actual group identify and marketing campaign telling us what they’re actually about can be rolled out quickly.”
For anybody who purchased the black t-shirt that mentioned “TOO MANY BALLS” on it for $35 on Tuesday, congratulations, you now are the proprietor of a NWSL collector’s merchandise.
Right here’s the silver lining: it’s not too late, not by a protracted shot. And Boston gained’t be the primary group that wants a course correction. They’ve clearly already began the changes as of late Tuesday night time into Wednesday morning, as toomanyballs.com (sure, an actual URL I nonetheless can’t imagine was used to advertise a brand new girls’s soccer group) has been retired.
That’s not the place it wants to finish although.
Racing Louisville FC received it proper, in the long run, and has among the finest colours and kits within the NWSL. However first, they’d Proof — the unique identify, with a crest too, launched in November 2019. By April, they had been reconsidering. By July, they introduced their new identification (with designs from Matt Wolff) to a lot aid.
The runway for Boston remains to be longer. Different groups, just like the Kansas Metropolis Present, and even whole leagues, just like the PWHL, realized that generally it’s higher to increase a deadline than to get it improper on the primary take. So sure, it’s a painful lesson for the Boston NWSL membership, nevertheless it doesn’t must stain the complete mission.
(Photograph: Barry Chin / The Boston Globe by way of Getty Photographs)