Boston Legacy FC, NWSL hoping to ride the wave of the World Cup
Can a giant, inflatable swan convince Bostonians with World Cup fever to become NWSL fanatics? Boston Legacy FC is hoping the answer is yes.
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During the group stage of the World Cup, Fox reported an average 5 million viewers across 72 matches, and Telemundo saw an average of 4.6 million viewers. According to FIFA, about 4.6 million fans attended the group stage matches, filling 99.7 percent of available seats.
The NWSL wants in on the action.
While so much of the country’s attention is trained on soccer — a sport often overlooked in the US pro sports landscape — the NWSL is using the tournament as an opportunity to grow its fan base.
And as one of the league’s newest expansion teams, Boston Legacy FC is uniquely positioned to capture new fans’ attention.
In hopes of doing just that, the club went big with its marketing in the most literal sense. The Legacy purchased a 44-foot-tall, 55-foot-long inflatable swan — the central motif of the team’s crest — and displayed it in Frog Pond on Boston Common on June 25, coinciding with the United States wrapping up the group stage.
Later that afternoon, the Legacy hosted a fan zone in the shadow of the swan with games, a DJ, and a photo booth.
It was the first of five appearances this summer for the swan, which will pop up at the World Cup FanZone in Providence on Friday and on July 9, as well as at the team’s matches at Centreville Bank Stadium in Pawtucket, R.I., on Sunday and on July 10.
But with soccer dominating airwaves and water-cooler conversations in Boston and across the country this summer, why would the team give their biggest marketing effort just five days of air time?
“We want to make it a real moment that fans have to seek out,” said Sabine Feldmann, the Legacy’s head of marketing. “We want to make it a destination.”
The Legacy have also hosted watch parties in and around Boston and Providence — including one at the ICA in Seaport for the France-Norway match, which featured appearances by a dozen Legacy players — and the team is a partner in the Boston Pride House at Cósmica in the South End.
They’re hoping that four home matches in the month of July will be a draw for fans who have caught “soccer fever.”
“The World Cup is incredibly crowded, especially in a market like Boston, which is one of the FIFA [host] markets,” Feldmann said. “You think about ‘How do I stand out, what do I do to make my brand stand out?’”
The swan and the watch parties are part of a larger, league-wide effort to capitalize on the sport’s time in the spotlight even while NWSL competition was on pause for the month of June. With this summer dubbed the “Summer of Soccer,” the NWSL is leading a content creator-driven social campaign and a national bus tour to drive fan engagement.
“We’re inserting ourselves in a very organic way and an authentic way that is unique, frankly, to the NWSL during this moment, so that when the men’s World Cup comes to a close, they see the league and our clubs as this natural next destination for their fandom,” said NWSL chief marketing officer Rachel Epstein.
The league is framing its marketing efforts through the idea that, much like the World Cup, the NWSL offers fans a chance to watch world-class soccer from the best players in the world.
“Our specific focus for the 2026 season is to make sure that our games and our product are in front of people who love elite soccer, agnostic to whether it is men or women, knowing that the NWSL is the best league in the world,” commissioner Jessica Berman said prior to the start of the season.
The NWSL returns to action Friday night after a monthlong break to accommodate the early stages of the World Cup. Boston Legacy FC, coming off a 1-0 loss to Kansas City on May 30, will return to the field Sunday at noon to take on Bay FC in Pawtucket.
The timing coincides with the final days of the round of 32 as World Cup games become more spread out. With the country’s interest in soccer piqued, the NWSL is hoping to create a bridge between World Cup fandom and NWSL fandom.
“It allows us to show up when the relevance is the most high,” Epstein said. “Rather than passing a baton [once the tournament ends], you get to mesh a little bit and seed our product during a time when everybody’s thinking about it.”
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