Boston has a new National Women’s Soccer League club, and it’s all about balls.
The 15th NWSL team was announced in September 2023 as one of the two expansion teams joining the league in 2026, and the best they could come up with for a woman’s sport was talking about balls.
The club's roll-out video starts with, “Boston. The City of Champions. A legacy filled with trophies, banners, rings, and…. Balls.” However, it all goes downhill from there. The voiceover continues to list the number of “balls” Boston sports has.
The Content
Old balls. New balls. Steelballs. Cold balls. Even goat balls. Tom Brady comes in after that last part to echo what is going on through everyone’s mind at this point, “Wait, what ?”
Still unsure where this is going? The voiceover then tells the viewer, “Yep. Boston loves its balls.” Except, it then says, “But maybe there are too many balls in this town. So let’s add a new chapter to our city’s legacy. With new idols. New dreams. And a new league to cheer for. The National Women’s Soccer League.” The video ends with the voiceover saying, “With no balls necessary. Well.” A player kicks a soccer ball, indicating that there will be, indeed balls in this league—just not the kind implied in the video.
The idea was that there were “too many balls” in that town, or too many male teams. With the popularity of women’s sports being on the rise, it was a good idea to play with the idea of there being too many male sports. The problem comes with the teenage-level emphasis on “balls,” and focusing the first half of the video on the male teams—such as the Celtics and Red Sox. Surely in the year they had to come up with this ad, someone had to stop those in charge and say, “Hey, maybe we should focus on the women?”
Reception In And Out Of The NWSL
The backlash was nearly immediate. Fans have argued that the post is sexist and transphobic. The video has been called “atrocious.” Some even compared it to a Saturday Night Live skit. Most of all, they all seem to really hate the name (the name is an anagram of Bostonian, the owners said on CBS).
As if the ad wasn’t enough, there’s a billboard in Boston that reads, “There’s too many balls in this town.” It even has a link to a site on it—toomanyballs.com.
After realizing their mistake, the Bos Nation crew scrubbed from the website. According to Bostonians, the billboard has been removed. The website on the billboard brings you to a page that says it’s “parked free,” or available for use. Two days after removing their video and billboards, they released a statement on X that apologized to the LGBTQ+ community for “missing the mark.”
“We fully acknowledge that the content of the campaign did not reflect the safe and welcoming environment we strive to create for all,” the statement said.
Bos Nation FC will officially begin play in 2026. Hopefully, by then the marketing team will drop the balls and come up with something else.
View the now-deleted ad here:
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