Thursday, June 18, 2009

Gimme a Beat!



No, the title isn't about a Janet Jackson/WNBA retrospective. Rather, the name of the new Women's Professional Soccer league franchise in Atlanta has been revealed. The new franchise will be called the Atlanta Beat, and start play in 2010.

Dream president Bill Bolen gets a quote:

“The good thing for a franchise like the Dream or the new WPS team is that our investment is not as large and therefore we do not have to achieve the same revenue targets that a larger sports franchise has to reach in order to be successful,” Dream president Bill Bolen said via email.

Best of luck to the new Atlanta Beat. Maybe I'll cover it if I can figure out the mysteries of soccer.

5 comments:

Q McCall said...

I know you weren't intending to go musical on this post... but TrueHoop has a post today about songs for NBA draft prospect Hasheem Thabeet...

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-41-107/Hasheem-Thabeet--in-Song.html

Looks like someone has already done some research for unofficial Atlanta Beat theme songs. ;)

Ethan said...

Hopefully we can go to a game next season and I'll spin the experience for you. :-)

"Just start booing the ref! Trust me on this!"

STL vs ATL, baby.

Rebecca said...

The Atlanta Beat again? At least Philadelphia changed names when they got a WPS franchise. I know some WPS cities carried over WUSA names, but Freedom makes sense for Washington and Breakers doesn't suck as a name. But I don't understand why Atlanta went with Beat the first time.

Ethan said...

Because they're trying to drum up interest in soccer.

Ba dum dum.

Try the veal!

Ethan said...

More seriously, without the facts, some of these teams may be stuck where the rights are owned by [whoever] and therefore the name must carry over. Seems to me that happened at least once in MLS.

(Conversely, it's why the Seattle Sounders are the "Sounders FC" because the rights to the USL name are being held by the USL team owner(s).)