Many Believe the Telecom Magnate and Magicjack Owner Dan Borislow Sabotaged the Women's Professional Soccer League with His B

FRANCHISE ISSUE BY SHAUN ASSAEL & PETER KEATING MANY BELIEVE THE TELECOM MAGNATE AND MAGICJACK OWNER DAN BORISLOW SABOTAGED THE WOMEN’S PROFESSIONAL SOCCER LEAGUE WITH HIS BIZARRE BEHAVIOR. SO WHY DO THE SPORT’S BIGGEST STARS CONTINUE TO BACK HIM? 78 ESPN The Magazine 09/17/2012 illustration by BRYAN CHRISTIE DESIGN FRANCHISE ISSUE Borislow looms large in women’s soccer, posing here in 2011 with members of his daughter’s U14 squad and his MagicJack team (including Abby Wambach, near left in blue). He calls soccer “everything that is good.” son’s speech impediment, once threatening not to talk to him until he “fixed” it. “He demanded we work, and there were no handouts,” Borislow wrote. “He was a very tough guy.” When Borislow was 13, his parents divorced, and he began spending summers in Florida with his maternal grandfather—a dapper, carnation-wearing gambler named Nathan “Nocky” Lerman. Nocky mingled with bookies and jockeys at racetracks and liked to sit his grandson down at bars while he threw back a few drinks and imparted life lessons. “His grandfather pretty much raised him,” says John Scanlan, a Pennsylvania-based horse trainer and longtime family friend. At Widener University in Chester, Pa., an Borislow’s eyes sparkled Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) league— Rampone and Hope Solo were part of a women’s for an even lower-paying gig on a minor or making 200 bucks a night in dingy stadiums in Borislow studied business but also developed as he plied half a dozen of a team he’d recently purchased. Sparing no national team that captured its fourth Olympic semipro team closer to home. If you’re lucky the middle of nowhere, he’s the best game in a love for soccer as the left fullback for his the greatest women soccer expense on his new MagicJack recruits, he put gold medal before a record 80,203 fans at enough to make the U.S. national team, you can town—even if the price for taking his cash is school’s team. “After how I grew up, it’s the players on the planet with them up in lavish condos and let them drive his London’s Wembley Stadium. In the glow of their earn a salary of up to $60,000 from the U.S. being subjected to his humiliating barbs and safest place I know,” he wrote of a soccer field hundred-dollar bottles of luxury fleet of Bentleys and Benzes. But as the win over Japan, the team’s stars should be Soccer Federation (USSF) to play friendlies and unpredictable behavior. in one of his emails. wine on a rainy evening in evening wore on, the wine started to wear returning to steady jobs in a pro league that international competitions like the Women’s “Nobody in women’s sports has ever seen an After graduating in 1984, Borislow was April 2011. down Borislow’s charm. caters to its fans, à la Candace Parker and her World Cup and the Olympics. But in between owner like Dan,” says Solo. “You’re not always making a living installing cable boxes and Six months earlier, According to some of the players present, gold medal teammates in the WNBA. tournaments, the options remain the same. going to get along with him, but he’s invested tending bar outside of Philadelphia when he the telecom entrepreneur, Borislow leaned into one woman and asked Instead, they arrive to find WPS out of Enter Borislow, who is moving forward with in the women’s game.” had his big idea: Thanks to the government whose MagicJack phone about her roommate: “Which one of you is the business—another casualty of the struggle to sell his MagicJack team, with or without a league. “At the end of the day, we need people to buy breakup of AT&T, it was suddenly possible to service is valued at giver and which one is the receiver?” he blurted women’s soccer to America. The league began And because he has retained the loyalty of in,” Wambach told ESPN at the Olympics in buy long-distance phone minutes at bulk $450 million, was spending his spare time out. Then he turned to another player and play in March 2009 with an ambitious plan for some of the biggest stars in the sport, including London, where Borislow paid for the national discounts and then resell them at retail on the coaching youth soccer in Palm Beach, Fla. Now asked, “Why have you never had a sexual growth. But like the failed Women’s United Solo and Wambach, he finds himself the team to have luxury dinners and got them into open market. With a $160,000 loan from a he had Abby Wambach and her teammates at relationship with a woman?” Soccer Association of the early 2000s, WPS most influential backer of women’s soccer in the sold-out men’s semifinal basketball game. local gambler, Borislow launched a company his elbows, laughing at his jokes and watching A few of the women laughed—either because couldn’t figure out how to bridge the excitement America. “Why is it okay that the athletes In her decade-long pro career, Wambach has called Tel-Save in 1989. Eight years later, in a him throw around so much money that, as one they thought he was amusing or because they of World Cup and Olympic years. Oh, the league who represent our country the best should be now seen two women’s leagues come and go. visionary move, Borislow negotiated a deal with player at the dinner recalls, he “seemed to have were supremely uncomfortable. tried, spending wildly to create buzz and luring paid wages that leave them at poverty level?” he “It’s not always going to be easy,” she says. “And AOL to market those minutes over the web. thousands of dollars in cash in his pocket.” Shortly after that dinner, one of his new the biggest names to franchises in Chicago, wrote in one of several email exchanges with it doesn’t always need to be a feel-good.” After single-handedly building Tel-Save into a There is little that the 50-year-old Borislow recruits found herself confused about what to call St. Louis, LA and Washington, D.C., but it got The Magazine. “I would never pay someone giant with thousands of employees, he sold his denies himself. At his oceanfront mansion in her employer: Dan? Mr. Borislow? Boss? Coach? walloped by runaway costs that fans couldn’t who is best in their field these types of ridicu- Borislow’s story began in the Philadelphia shares in 1998 for a reported $300 million, Palm Beach, there’s a soccer field by the water, His reply says a lot about the man who can make support, not the least of which was a league lous wages. It would be embarrassing. We suburb of Norristown, where he grew up as making him one of the first dot-com million- not far from where he keeps his 66-foot yacht or break professional women’s soccer in America. o"ce running on a gaudy $5 million budget. By should not have a pro league in this country one of four boys. He was born with a hearing aires. “I laugh at people who say they need complete with nine flat-screens. And on this “Call me Daddy,” he replied. the end of WPS’s first year, most franchises were unless they get paid real wages.” defect that left him partially deaf as a child millions to start a business when I grew a night in Philadelphia, he was in rare form, drunk already hemorrhaging north of $2 million. To his ex-partners in WPS, Borislow is an and inhibited his ability to communicate. He company from that loan to $2 billion,” he wrote. on the celebrity he’d paid handsomely to be near. In August, a year and a half after the boisterous Now most of the league’s former players face insu!erable bully who made them choose describes his father, who held a government job In the late ’90s, Borislow settled down on a The two tables of women in Borislow’s party dinner—the details of which Borislow denies— a hollow choice: move to Europe to play elite between shutting down the league and playing as a mental health director for several counties, $20 million estate in Palm Beach with his wife, were members of a team in the fledgling key MagicJack players like Wambach, Christie soccer for as little as $20,000 a season, or settle by his rules. But to the elite women players as an imposing workaholic who bridled at his Michelle, and kids, Danny and Kylie. Living 80 ESPN The Magazine 09/17/2012 THOMAS CORDY/THE PALM BEACH POST/ZUMAPRESS 09/17/2012 ESPN The Magazine 81 T:3.25” T:3.25” “WHY IS IT OKAY THAT THE ATHLETES WHO REPRESENT OUR COUNTRY THE B EST SHOULD B E FRANCHISE ISSUE PAID WAGES THAT LEAVE THEM AT POVERTY LEVEL?” B ORISLOW WROTE TO THE MAGAZINE. pickups like Solo, Rampone, Shannon Boxx, sweeper, behind the defenders, and sometimes Marian Dalmy, Lindsay Tarpley and Tina he would bring his daughter or his employees,” Ellertson—all current or former members of says a member of the squad. “We had to play the U.S. national team who were thrilled to be 13- and 14-year-old girls.” making far more than their colleagues else- Borislow also brought his Philly tough-guy where.

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