Boston is getting a new soccer team in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in 2026. The team, called Bos Nation, will be Boston’s first professional women’s soccer team in six years since the Boston Breakers.
Bos Nation launched a campaign to start building their fan base this October that they wanted to be “bold and buzzworthy,” according to their social media post, but has instead been controversial.
The campaign followed the tagline “Too Many Balls,” claiming that there is too much attention to male sports teams in Boston. The phrase was seen on T-shirts, billboards, a social media video, all of which have been taken down. The video included photographs of male sports teams from the Boston area, such as the Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots, with a voiceover saying, “Boston loves its balls, but maybe there are too many balls.” The voiceover also said there are “no balls necessary” for Bos Nation.
NWSL fans, current players, and former players have spoken out against the campaign, calling the tagline offensive. Many have disliked “Bos Nation”, which is an anagram of Bostonian. Stephanie Connaughton, one of the owners of the team, said the name is also meant to represent “boss energy.” But the reactions to this name have not been great. Meg Lineman wrote, “between the name and the campaign, this is the worst NWSL launch I’ve ever seen in the history of the league.”
Another major criticism of the campaign has been its focus on men. Former professional women’s soccer player, Samantha Mewis, who is from Massachusetts said on her podcast that “we don’t need to center men’s sports in our conversations anymore.” The video only focuses on the male sports teams near Boston, and ignores the other women’s sports teams in the Boston area.
Current NWSL player, Quinn, who identifies as nonbinary and transgender and only uses their surname, commented on Bos Nation’s Instagram saying the campaign was transphobic and later said their comment was hidden. During Bos Nation’s launch party, a fan was seen holding a sign reading “no home for transphobia.”
The team has since apologized via social media, saying the campaign “missed the mark” and “did not reflect the safe and welcoming environment we strive to create for all.” They directly apologized to the “LGBTQ+ community and to the trans community in particular for the hurt we caused.”
Despite the controversy, not everyone feels this distaste with the team. Several fans have expressed their joy that a women’s soccer team is returning to Boston. Judith Gibson-Obunieff, an NWSL fan, told the Boston Globe that she feels “lukewarm” towards the team name but is “over the moon to have [a team] back in Boston.”
The phrase often used for a situation like this is “any press is good press,” but Doug Gould, advertising professor at Boston University, weighed in on this campaign and in this situation he would not call it good press. To him, the campaign had two major faults, it needed to be intellectualized and it lacked logic. He says the “hyperbole has to be connected to a logical thread so consumers can connect the dots” and he questions how “there are too many balls in this town” fits when soccer involves a ball.
Professor Gould said that although the team “got more notice than a smaller campaign would have gotten them… [he] wouldn’t say that’s a good thing. But it did earn them a lot more eyeballs and ears than they ever would have gotten with a small regional campaign for a new soccer team.” He says you have to “have a plan” “when you’re making a splash” and that “when you push the boundaries, sometimes you step over the edge.”
Bos Nation is no longer using “Too Many Balls” to promote their team, but many fans are still urging them to change their name. The team has a lot of time to put forth another campaign to gain more supporters and regain the trust of NWSL fans until their start in 2026.
Image Sources:
CBS News
The Athletic
Indresh Chandel