League: No update on Boston Breakers revival for 2019

If you know a Boston Breakers fan, you might want to tell them ... there’s still no news about the club’s revival for next year.

Six months after the club folded — right after the 2018 National Women’s Soccer League draft in late January — officials with the Chicago-based league tell BostonSportsJournal.com that while they are in “active expansion conversations,” there are no updates regarding the Breakers’ return.

“The NWSL remains committed to expanding with the right owners at the right time when the league’s expansion criteria is met and further elevates the stability and viability of the league,” NWSL Director of Communications Patrick Donnelly wrote in a recent email exchange with BSJ. “We continue to have active expansion conversations with a number of potential prospects. However, at this time, we do not have any updates regarding expansion for the 2019 season and beyond.”

The club folded on Jan. 28 after a new ownership group for the Breakers backed out in the eleventh hour, forcing the NWSL to go ahead with only nine teams in 2018, the league’s sixth season of operation.

The former owners of the club had notified the league in 2017 that they were backing out, which prompted the NWSL to look for new owners.

After the club folded, NWSL managing director Amanda Duffy told The Associated Press that the league is committed to Boston.

“It’s a market we believe in,” she told the AP. “It’s a brand that has a great historical reputation in women’s professional soccer.”

The Breakers began in 2001 as part of the Women’s United Soccer Association, a league which only ran for three seasons before shutting down in 2003. Four years later, the Breakers returned to join a new women’s soccer league, Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), but didn’t start playing in the league until 2009.

That edition of the Breakers, too, lasted three years, before it joined the short-lived Women’s Premier Soccer League Elite for 2012.

In 2013, the NWSL rose from the ashes of WPS with eight teams, the Breakers included.

In their five years in NWSL, the Breakers never reached the league’s postseason.

BSJ Analysis

Will the Breakers ever return? It’s a good question that doesn’t have an easy answer. And if you don’t care about women’s soccer, this story isn’t for you.

Investing in a women’s soccer team is a crapshoot, especially in a city like Boston that has so many sporting options already: in the spring and summer, after the Celtics and Bruins have ended their seasons and with the Red Sox and Revolution seasons fully underway, it’s understandable that it would be a tough sell to some people. However, I wouldn’t find it unthinkable to schedule matches when the Sox and Revs aren’t in town, on a Sunday afternoon, or a Saturday afternoon, or whenever it’s feasible when the Sox and Revs are on the road.

I don’t know how they marketed their team, and I’m not a marketing expert — I’d never seen Breakers ads on TV or on the radio when they were around, so what do I know — but with the success of the women’s national team (three stars on the shirt, people), one would think that women’s soccer fans would flock to Jordan Field, the small turf field adjacent to see the team play, especially when clubs with national team stars come to Boston.

Of course, you need to know your market, and if they’re not willing to go to the high schools and local colleges and approach young women and show them the product and show them why they should care and tell their parents to get season tickets…. OK, I’m rambling here.

Is there an investor in the area who not only loves soccer, but is also willing to lose $x million here and there to build the brand and to keep the product going? And no, it doesn’t have the be a man with deep pockets: is there a businesswoman willing to step up to the penalty spot and deliver to fans?

That might be the only way the Breakers return.