It’s remarkable how often a marketing campaign meant to promote an organization instead blows up in the organization’s face and devolves into a crisis. Such was the recent experience of the National Women’s Soccer League’s newest expansion team.

On Oct. 15, the Boston-based squad held a major event at a Dick’s House of Sport to officially unveil its name, BOS Nation FC, and its marketing campaign, including a one-minute promotional video. Unfortunately, the ad, whose theme has been expressed in news reports variously as “Balls, Balls, Balls” and “Too Many Balls,” didn’t go over well.

After showing several Boston-based male professional athletes throughout history with a “balls” voice-over commentary (“old balls, new balls, steel balls”), the video declares, “Yeah, Boston loves its balls. But maybe there are too many balls in this town. So let’s add a new chapter to our city’s legacy.”

Oy vey.

‘No Room’

As you can imagine, fans had a few things to say about this, and they weren’t positive things. Even during the ceremony, one person held up a sign that read “No Room for Transphobia,” which the protestor said was in response to the ad, according to The Athletic.

“Why would a women’s soccer team, noted for its diverse fan base and especially its passionate LGBTQIA+ fans, choose ‘too many balls’ as a concept?” asked Yahoo! Sports Staff Writer Liz Roscher.

Good question. The requisite follow-up statement, which came the next day, didn’t provide much of an answer. “While we had hoped to create a bold and buzzworthy brand launch campaign, we missed the mark,” the team admitted. “We fully acknowledge that the content of the campaign did not reflect the safe and welcoming environment we strive to create for all, and we apologize to the LGBTQ+ community and to the trans community in particular for the hurt we caused.”

Footie Fans

In our view, that statement also missed the mark in not explaining how this happened and what the team would do about it. Footie fans, and the Boston public, deserve better. More broadly, it’s a little astonishing that, in this day and age, organizations don’t have processes for vetting how a bold marketing campaign might be heard differently from what’s intended. Put it on the to-do list.

This is especially so because BOS Nation had a longish run-up to this highly anticipated moment. The NWSL announced the Boston expansion, the league’s 15th team, in September 2023. Official play is slated to start in 2026.

All the statement had to say about making amends was, “Thank you to all who have held us accountable by calling for us to do better. We hear and we will, together.”

‘Horrible Name’

We’ll see. But the story didn’t end there. People were also upset with the name. The team explained that BOS Nation, pronounced “Boss Nation,” is an anagram of Bostonian (which it is). The criticism’s crux is unclear, but the general feeling seems to be that it’s a horrible name. We know this from comments on X, such as “Horrible name” and “That’s horrible.”

Plainly, BOS Nation has more explaining to do. It can drop the marketing effort (it apparently shuttered the toomanyballs.com website). But more convincing will be needed on the name front.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

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