You only get one chance to make a first impression. Or two, if you’re Boston’s NWSL expansion team.
Back in 2023, the National Women’s Soccer League granted Boston an expansion team. In October 2024, the team revealed its name, BOS Nation FC (an anagram of ‘Bostonian’), and logo. Things immediately took a turn for the worse — the name and logo were both roundly criticized immediately. To make matters even worse, a launch video was posted and hastily deleted after being criticized as transphobic. Within hours, the team went from launching to apologizing.
From us to you. pic.twitter.com/ASHFHltb5n
— Boston Legacy FC (@NWSLBoston) October 16, 2024
I’m pretty sure it was the most disastrous sports team branding launch that I’ve ever seen. I’m struggling to remember one that went over worse.
By the end of 2024, it appeared likely that “BOS Nation” was heading for the dustbin of history. On March 14th, the team formally confirmed that they would not be retaining the name. Yesterday, we got the team’s new name: Boston Legacy FC.
The club has attempted to involve as many fans as possible in the renaming, and also published their “guiding criteria” on its website. Among them was one that caught my eye — “Steer clear of colonial, Revolutionary War, and nautical themes.” I was somewhat surprised to read that, considering how proudly Bostonians feel about its role in the American Revolution and how intimately the city has been connected to the sea, but considering the local men’s soccer team is called the Revolution and the other major professional women’s sports team in Boston is called the Fleet, it makes sense that the team wants to avoid confusion with those other teams.
The name, in my opinion, is aggressively fine, which makes it orders of magnitude better than BOS Nation FC. “Boston Legacy FC” feels almost tailor-made to be as nonoffensive as possible. To wit: according to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), the club brought in thirty-one “brand consultants” after the initial debacle. When written out in black-and-white like that, “Boston Legacy FC” sure does sound like the most “decided on by literally 31 people with marketing degrees” name in history.
And yet, it could still work. The team hasn’t yet revealed a crest, and the placeholder logo seems like it was intentionally crafted to be as forgettable as possible. The crest, I think, will make or break this whole identity. If my beloved Hearts of Pine had just launched their name with no crest, I probably would have been much more measured in my reaction. This club did do something right, brand-wise, before doing everything else wrong: the logo for the expansion team before it was named was pretty cool, centering the identity around one of the prominent support beams of the Zakim Bridge. That gives me confidence that the team will be able to put together a decent crest.
Anyway, what say you?
LET’S GO LEGS!
Why do U.S. teams insist on using FC? Are they trying to ride the coattails of top international teams that use FC? Americans don’t call it football, they call it soccer. Wouldn’t SC make a lot more sense?
Entirely leaving FC or SC off is a better option.
To be fair, other English speaking countries use FC too, despite them calling it soccer. England, Scotland, and Wales are actually the only English speaking countries that (almost) exclusively use football. Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and of course, the USA all mostly use soccer because other codes of football are more popular there (Gridiron, Gaelic, Rugby, Aussie Rules). Yet all of them have soccer teams that use FC.
“Are they trying to ride the coattails of top international teams that use FC?”
That’s how it’s always seemed to me.
“Wouldn’t SC make a lot more sense?”
Yes, it would. Though coming up with a real nickname would be even better.
The official name for the New York Giants is” New York football Giants”
The corporation that owns the Giants is called New York Football Giants, Inc. The team itself is just called the New York Giants.
The Giants’ legal name is “The New York Football Giants” to distinguish them from the New York Giants baseball team, which played in New York from 1885-1957 before moving to San Francisco.
(link)
Yes, it is a direct attempt to fool people into thinking the club in question has a long history. It comes off like a little kid wearing a Burger King crown and declaring himself Emperor Of My Block.
I think using FC serves 2 purposes. 1) to be more marketable overseas, and 2) to be instantly identifiable as a soccer team. Any club/ franchise/ team worldwide that has FC in its name, you instantly know it’s a soccer team.
Yeah, there’s kind of a hardcore vs casual fan divide. As in England, “soccer” is commonly used by everyone. But more devoted American fans of the sport really do also say and recognize when they hear “football,” “footy,” and the like. This is not confusing to most such fans, because a) They may not give a rip about gridiron football at all; b) If they do, the context generally makes it obvious which “football” one is talking about; c) “Football” is an obviously risible, inapt name for the American game anyway; d) The sports really don’t compete with one another on any meaningful basis, so confusion is unlikely. Different athletes, different amateur development paths, different cultural/media presences, different seasons of play, etc. Whereas I’ve personally witnessed casual fans get confused by the FC thing. So if a team is looking to connect with the most devoted existing fans, FC suggests itself. If a team is looking to connect with more casual sports fans who aren’t already devoted to soccer football, SC suggests itself. Purely anecdotally, I’ve seen more teams find more success building first on the devoted soccer football fan base and expanding from there, rather than casting the wider, casual-fan net and trying to deepen fan engagement from there. So I’ve seen more FCs succeed than SCs, but each can be a viable business model for a team. Local market conditions are probably the vastly most important factor here.
I think they drop the “FC” part. One mistake MLS has made is trying to fit into the global (i.e. European) soccer scene. The beauty of MLS when it started was how unashamedly American it all was. I don’t mind some of the teams having “traditional” names, but you can’t beat LA Galaxy, Columbus Crew, New York MetroStars, Colorado Rapids, etc.
NWSL should take note and attempt to continue/revive the American tradition.
Counterpoint: those names all stink.
Disagree, Rapids is fine and Galaxy has a sort of Cosmos-esque connotation. What bothers me a lot more in US soccer is the really forced adoption of European naming standards, like “FC” this and that and “Real Salt Lake” or “Sporting KC”. Just call yourself the Wildcats and leave us all alone.
Not to mention they were actually the New York/New Jersey Metrostars … though naming them after an energy drink is, ahem, cosmically worse.
Countcounterpoint: I don’t actually care about whether the individual names are good, I’m talking about the spirit of them. As Brodie said, emulating historic clubs by tacking on “Real” (which isn’t even English) and “Sporting” is embarrassing at best.
Do you find it “embarrassing” for Japanese soccer teams to adopt names based on Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish words, or Japanese baseball teams wearing uniforms with player and team names in English? Or for the Serie A teams that play in the cities of Genova and Milano going by the names “Genoa Cricket & Football Club” and “AC Milan”? American teams aren’t the only ones adopting “foreign” names or stylings.
No, I don’t.
Minor disagreement: Crew works precisely because it echoes names already in use by English FCs: It’s equivalent to United or City, in the way that English teams use City as effectively a synonym for United in terms of how the team was formed long ago. Union Omaha of USL1 works for me for the same reason. It’s like a slightly Americanized spin on the English tradition.
columbus crew plus original logo was cool
Legacy is not a good sports team name.
Especially when it literally means “gift you leave someone in your will”.
This. It’s screams of trying too hard to do something original.
Is there a link to information/visuals for the new brand? Or is the picture the only thing that’s been released?
I wonder if James Spader will be in this one. Oh, wait, that’s Boston Lega… nevermind.
Denny Crane.
I’m not the target audience for this team, but BOS Nation never sounded that bad to me. It’s unique and doesn’t feel “minor league” for whatever reason. If the marketing rollout wasn’t such a debacle, I wonder how/if overall public sentiment toward the name would have changed.
“BOS Nation never sounded that bad to me”
Here’s a simple test. Tell me you’re going to see that team play a game this weekend. Use their full name when telling me.
I’m with Dustin. On the one hand, “I’m gonna catch the boss nation game Saturday” doesn’t sound any more foolish to me than naming a songbird or hosiery really most team names. I mean, what the heck is a Met? It’s just a random, meaningless syllable. Team names stand for the team, and absent the context of an established team, every team name is arbitrary and ridiculous. On the other hand, people just don’t say full team names like that in conversation, especially soccer names. I don’t say I’m going to the Forward Madison FC game; I say I’m going to see Forward or FMFC or the Mingos. So here, one would likely speak of going to catch the Nation game or going to see Nation or Nation FC or BNFC. Which seems indistinguishable to me from Legacy or Legacy FC or BLFC.
The one thing about the old name for me is that it constantly makes me hear one of the Belters from the TV show The Expanse say “Bosmang.”
Great, they received so much feedback for their terrible pun name that they replaced it with the most boring name imaginable. Why not just call the team “Boston Enterprise Edition” or “Boston Landmark Achievement”?
The “31 brand consultants” feels a lot like on Parks and Rec when Entertainment 720 used 5 accountants, but on a bigger, more ridiculous scale. 31 brand consultants is too many brand consultants.
Entertainment 720 is Pawnee’s first and only entertainment media conglomerate. Helmed by nightclub impresarios and marketing masterminds Tom Haverford and Jean-Ralphio Saperstein, Entertainment 720 is your one-stop-shop for public relations, marketing, or anything having to do with reaching out to people, communicating effectively, and other desirable abilities.
They’re called that because they’re willing to go around the world TWICE for their Clients!
Entertainment 720 were some of the funniest scenes. Haven’t thought of that in a while. That office/club they set up was great.
I loved when they hired Detlef Schrempf & Roy Hibbert as hosts. To shoot hoops on the indoor court & basically for being tall enough to stand next to Tom’s giant chair & reach things
Roy Hibbert has a second career as a shrimp reacher if he wants it
This should really be saved and highlighted as a textbook example of a comment that needs to be deleted.
Dang, I thought my response to the disgusting comment would disappear with it. Now I look even more crazy lol
Since the Terriers are already taken by BU.
For adorable dogs, I ran this by my feminist sister and 2x owner of this dog breed. Seriously.
She thought Boston Bichons would be awesome.
The most bad-A team in the league with the toughest unofficial *nickname.
Women can take the word back and rally around it. No joke.
Boston Legacy FC is totally lame.
Why the Hell can’t they bring back Boston Breakers again? That was the name for women’s soccer in Boston for most of this century. And anytime you can bring back a USFL name it’s a good thing.
Bring on the Cleveland Camry, the Cincinnatti Civics, the Lexington Lexus, the Louisiana Landcruisers, the Atlanta Acura, the Pittsburgh Pajero and the Detroit Datsuns! Add the Boston Legacy and we have the National Wheels Soccer League.
BOS Yeti FC
Darian Jenkins had it right last night on the Attacking Third podcast.
The name should be the Boston Coven.
Shout-out to Salem, Mass.!
“The name should be the Boston Coven.”
I’m sure that wouldn’t cause any controversy…
They should re-write the video ad campaign but keep the original narrator!