Johanna (JoJo) & John Boynton are former Governors of Premier Hockey Federation and former owners of the Boston Pride, Toronto Six, and Metropolitan Riveters. 

This interview was conducted on Friday June 30, 2023. It  has been lightly edited for consistency, context, and clarity.

Boston Women’s Sports: I imagine it has been a pretty busy day.

John Boynton: It’s been a great day, but busy, yes.

Boston Women’s Sports: Lots of big news today. How are you feeling?  

John Boynton: Very excited.  It’s been in the works for a long time and it’s great to finally be crossing the finish line.

BWS: So tell me, this has been something you all have been working on for awhile?

John Boynton: Yes.

BWS: For everyone who believes in the power of professional hockey, there’s been a long desire for one strong league with substantial investment: How is this acquisition and merger the way to get there?

John Boynton: I guess what I would say is the division that we have had in women’s hockey for the past several years has been an impediment to its growth, and we have watched as women’s soccer and women’s basketball surged ahead and hockey held back because of its bifurcation.  So the elimination of that (bifurcation) is going to eliminate a lot of headwinds and, we think, enable the whole enterprise to grow faster. And when you couple the elimination of the division with the infusion of a lot of capital from a new ownership group that understands how to run top-tier sports properties, it’s a recipe that should add up to a lot of success for women’s hockey.

BWS: Are folks willing to talk about how much capital infusion that is at this point?

John Boynton: No, they’re not.  That’s a question you have to ask the new owners, but my understanding is that it is going to be a substantial amount of capital over the next several years.

BWS: Well, that’s certainly promising, because my sense is, at the moment there is a feeling of a lot of chaos at the moment, particularly around the voiding of player contracts and the sale of these league. Given what we have said about the way the chronic underinvestment in professional women’s sports has been more often the norm than it should have been, why should players and fans trust that this chaos is worth it?

John Boynton: First, I wouldn’t describe it as chaos.  I would say that when something of this magnitude happens it is inevitably going to be disruptive.  Our commissioner (Reagan Carey) has said this is probably the biggest moment in women’s hockey since 1998 when women’s hockey became an Olympic sport for the first time.  So there is bound to be disruption.  I don’t want to minimize that, but I also think that there are economic realities to all sports, and it is absolutely true that women’s sports have been under-resourced, but what we are seeing over the last few years is the substantial inflow of new capital into women’s sports.  Look at the commitment that our group made to invest $25 million dollars over three years in women’s hockey; that was the biggest commitment that had been made in women’s hockey. You look at the fact that we had increased the salary cap in our league to $1.5 million dollars.  That is the highest salary cap in any women’s sport.  So the dollars are beginning to flow, and they’re about to flow even faster.  

If you look at what happened with women’s soccer with the sale of that recent franchise, at $50 million dollars plus (NWSL expansion bids), and you look at what happens when someone like Mark Walter gets into a sport, he goes big, look what he did with the Dodgers…  So there is every reason to believe that women’s hockey now is going to benefit from a massive infusion of capital from the next tier in ownership.  It’s going to be a little chaotic now, it’s a major change, a structural shift, but the PHF had built a foundation that Mark Walter recognized would allow him to scale the whole sport faster…  I think it’s a strong vote of confidence in women’s hockey as a professional sport.

BWS: I am interviewing you from Boston that has been present in every iteration of the  league, but as of now, there are no promises about where the future teams will be. What word do you have to fans as these merged leagues move from eleven total teams to six?

John Boynton: I really don’t.  That is a decision for the new owners to make.  I have read the same things you have.  They never disclosed to us how many markets or which markets…   I don’t have any first-hand knowledge. 

BWS: One of the things that has also been a question from a worker’s standpoint and from an owner’s standpoint is about the new CBA (collective bargaining agreement). I’m curious why not wait until the full rosters are in place so that every player can have a voice on it, as opposed to just working with the PWHPA (Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association) players. 

John Boynton: I’m no labor lawyer, … but I can see the wisdom of putting a player’s union in place, and adopting a CBA with the expectation that whoever ends up in the league will benefit from the same CBA. I have to trust that the PWHPA did a good job negotiating a CBA that will work for the benefit of all professional women’s ice hockey players.  Though I don’t know the details of the CBA, I would expect that players who don’t end up winning spots on the teams will leave the union and players that do end up winning spots on teams will join the union just as would be in the case of any professional sport player’s association, and that the CBA provides assurances that the players are seeking to assure they will get the kind of terms that they feel are warranted, so I’m not bothered by the fact that they didn’t wait.  I think it’s a good piece of infrastructure to have in place and, from what I read, they put together a really strong CBA.

BWS: For those of us that are not familiar with the differences between league ownership and team ownership, what does this mean for those, like you who are independent owners of teams? 

John Boynton: The new owners have purchased the league and all the teams, so it will be operated as a single entity league.  One owner will own all the teams.  Each team is managed independently but they all are funded and coordinated from the center.  There will be no independent owners.  So the existing PHF owners will all be out, and Mark Walter, Kimbra Walter, their group will be the owners of the new league going forward.

BWS: Do you have clarity on your role in the new league?

John Boynton: We will have no role in the league going forward, but we will continue to be big fans.  We will be cheering from the sidelines.

BWS: Is there anything, John, that you want to make sure you are sharing or that is coming through in this?

John Boynton: This is a bittersweet time for us. A hard time for the players and staff, as things sort out.  There’s a lot that people don’t know.  People don’t know exactly how many teams.  Staff don’t know exactly what their roles will be.  We bent over backwards to ensure that there is a fair and equitable process for player selection.  We want to make sure that the new league has the best players in the world, and this should be based on talent and not politics. There’s been a lot of politics between the PWHPA and the PHF over the last several years. It’s time for us to come together and work for the common good of the sport. That will happen over time, but the next few weeks and months will be difficult.  I trust that, if everyone is working in good faith and keeping the best interests of the game in mind, it will all sort itself out.  A year from now people will say, “that was a really good thing.” 

BWS: So you’re feeling hopeful? 

John Boynton: I am feeling hopeful. 

BWS: You all have been really essential to the formation and “middle teenage years” of the PHF, I’m curious what you are feeling at this moment?

Johanna (JoJo) Boynton : I’m feeling excited and melancholy.  We’ve so loved this journey. As John said, I played hockey in college, in the late 80’s. There were no national tournaments, no national teams, no Olympics. We got involved with the league four years ago .  It’s been a life passion for me, supporting my college on the women’s side and promoting the game for girls. All of that.  When we got involved, we really believed we could make a difference in the professional (women’s hockey) landscape. When we got involved it was after the walk-out of the national team players in 2019, many of whom we know personally.  We hosted many of them in our town, they lived in our house and ate at our table when they were training for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. So we calculated that if we had a place at the table we could really help it (the sport) grow and make it better.  In effect, that was what we sought to do and so the goal was alway  to unite the ecosystem. That’s always been our beacon and compass, even though it’s not a straight path. Today is so exciting for us because this is what’s so critical for the women’s game to flourish. The timing is great for exposure and support in women’s sport.  This kind of unification is critical to people’s interest and support (of women’s sports). 

It’s wonderful.  I seem melancholy because I loved it, and because we are stepping away after four years of day-to-day building with people who are mission driven and super-committed.  I’m really proud of what we’ve built. We were really poised for a great season. The Mark Walters Group and Billy Jean King saw that there is real value here, and want to make this thing really awesome.

BWS: I come to this more from coverage of women’s soccer and resonate with the chronic under investment. I’m curious what is the tradeoff of a delay of season and voiding of contracts and the major infusion of cash?

JoJo Boynton: This negotiation took months. There are lots of people, lots of issues and lots of things to iron out.  Without the assurance that things were going to work out, Plan B was to stay the course and put on another great season in hopes of attracting the likes of Mark Walters and the PWHPA, people who would see this as something we should be doing together. 

Unfortunately, the timing was such that we couldn’t pause.  Had we paused, everyone would have been like “what’s going on?”  We were under strict NDAs and had to be very careful. The hardest thing for us is that we built a real culture, and Reagan Carey really spearheaded this.  Her leadership built a culture of transparency and collaboration with the players.  That was part of the issue that had gone awry before we got involved.   

We on the PHF side have done as much as we can to put together a severance program for players who will not make the new league, and it’s up to the new owners to give clarity on what will happen next and how it will work.  That is their prerogative.  Many of these players will make the new league.  PHF has a lot of depth and strength that has been built over the four years. This will be the league of the very best players from both (previous leagues). And that will also mean there will be some from both who will not make it.  In the case of our players, that’s super disappointing because they had envisioned something else, because they’d gotten that far. But I think, my hope is, in the end, they feel that they’ve been well supported in navigating these uncertain waters for this next stretch. Because we care about them deeply.  We’ve gotten quite close.  We have worked collaboratively with them for many years.  They are awesome athletes and awesome women. Hopefully, if they are disappointed they didn’t make the new league, they will have felt like we were very attentive to how we  could support them, that it was for the good of the game.

BWS: Are there things JoJo that you want to make sure are shared or are known?

JoJo Boynton: We, as a PHF family, are proud of what we built and made happen. Many of those aspects and assets are going to help make this bigger and better and we are proud to be a part of that history. 

BWS: Thank you for taking the time to reflect on this with me.

JoJo Boynton: These are incredible athletes.  Playing ice hockey is really hard to do.  We feel really fortunate that we were in the right place at the right time to give it the next boost, that’s why we got involved, and it’s building momentum.  This is a great moment.