Gooooal!!
Boston welcomes a women’s pro soccer team at White Stadium in Franklin Park starting in the 2026 season
The City of Champions is adding another pro team to our sports constellation: this week the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) announced that Boston will be home to the league’s newest team, starting in the 2026 season!
I wear a few different hats in my life, but Soccer Mom is one of the most fun. Both of my boys have fallen in love with soccer through playing in a neighborhood program over the last two years, and it’s been amazing to watch their budding diligence, teamwork, and confidence on the pitch spill over into our daily lives.
So for me, the most exciting part of this week’s announcement is that Boston’s new team will also be the first pro team in the country to play out of a public school district-owned stadium, co-housed with student athletes. White Stadium, right in the heart of Franklin Park, will get a long-needed restoration through a partnership between the City of Boston and the Boston Unity ownership group—remaining the hub for BPS athletics while also adding an exciting new tenant.
Opened in 1949, White Stadium has a storied history as the site of major concerts and rallies, graduations, football games, and track meets—even serving as a host venue for the World Cross Country championships. But the stadium’s 10,000-seat capacity hasn’t been in full use since a fire damaged the East Grandstand several decades ago. The grass field is lumpy, loose gravel gets kicked up on the aging track, and the statewide high school athletics association has questioned whether BPS athletes’ times and distances can be certified due to concerns about whether the facilities meet competition standards. Over the years, plans to rebuild the stadium have seen several starts and stops due to projected costs, leadership transitions, and concerns about losing this resource for student athletes to a private entity.
A year ago, Boston’s Chief of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion Segun Idowu learned that the NWSL was opening a process to potentially add expansion teams to the league, and a group of women leaders in Boston were interested in putting together a bid. The Boston Unity ownership group—led by controlling partner Jennifer Epstein and managing partners Stephanie Connaughton, Ami Kuan Danoff, and Anna Palmer, with local investors such as Linda Whitlock, Richard Taylor, and Brad and Tracy Stevens—was clear about wanting to be fully embedded in the city to create opportunities for young people, so we assembled leadership across City agencies, led by Segun, Chief of Operations Dion Irish, and Chief of Energy, Environment & Open Space Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, to explore potential host venues around the city. We kept coming back to White Stadium for the chance to revitalize this resource, activate Franklin Park, and empower our student athletes.
But many cities have struck questionable deals in public-private partnerships to subsidize professional sports stadiums, so my first priority was to ensure sound legal protections for the interests of the City and our residents and taxpayers—building a pro bono legal team to supplement the City’s law department with some of the very best attorneys in town. Thank you to our incredible pro bono team from WilmerHale assembled by the legendary Bill Lee, including real estate expert Paul Jakubowski, Brett Jackson, and Robyn Casper (a proud BPS alum!), and the wonderful Steve Gans from Prince Lobel, who brought his deep knowledge and love of professional soccer to our efforts. Municipal law expert Sammy Nabulsi from Rose Law has also been instrumental.
With their counsel, the City and Boston Unity explored several options to structure a partnership that would ensure public benefit, especially for our public schools. Ultimately, we set the parameters and ran a public bidding process to create an innovative structure that had never been proposed before: Boston Public Schools will retain ownership and scheduling control over the venue, and the City will directly renovate the East Grandstand as the home for our student athletes with community space for studying and student activities, new locker rooms, strength and conditioning space, and BPS Athletics offices; Boston Unity will lease the West Grandstand and Grove area to be renovated into NWSL team locker rooms and concessions, rebuild the grass field, and maintain it at a professional standard for the pro team and for our students. We’ll also upgrade to an eight-lane running track to restore the stadium as a hub for track and field and cross country too.
With this week’s designation, we’ve begun formal lease negotiations and continue to work through a transportation plan with our Parks Department and Streets team, community members and neighbors, and stakeholders such as the Franklin Park Coalition and the Franklin Park Zoo. Our goal is to coordinate parking and shuttles to encourage activation of the entire park on game days and throughout the year.
Earlier this week, our BPS Athletics Director Avery Esdaile updated me on our high school sports sign-ups so far this school year: over 550 registered for Boys Soccer, 300 for Girls Soccer, 515 for Outdoor Track. My guess is those numbers will go way up as we get closer to 2026! As viewership and participation in professional women’s sports leagues takes off around the globe, I’m thrilled that our very own Boston Public Schools athletes and community will have role models and partners right in Boston, ready to build the next generation of athleticism, teamwork, and leadership.
This is fabulous news for all of Boston but especially for women and girls. Thanks Mayor Wu for your vision and execution!
I could be an old crank and wish that the stadium be demolished, olmsted’s overlook shelter rebuilt, the Shattuck campus be restored as parkland, the refectory rebuilt, the country park be de-golfed... But this is a realistic forward-looking development and congratulations to the Mayor and her team for brokering the deal.