Boavista FC Boavista Futebol Clube is a Portuguese sports club from Porto, founded on 1 August 1903 by English brothers Harry and Dick Lowe, who, having received an imported football from their father in England, established The Boavista Footballers together with Portuguese textile workers. The club, whose distinctive black-and-white chequered colours earned it the nickname Os Axadrezados (The Chequered Ones), rivalled in its early years another English club in the city, the Oporto Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club.
From 1911, the team played its matches at the modest Campo do Bessa, and it achieved its first promotion to the Primeira Liga in 1935, though over the following decades the club oscillated between the top flight and lower divisions — a pattern only broken when José Maria Pedroto took charge of the team in 1974. A new stadium was built on the site of the old Campo do Bessa between 1969 and 1972, later thoroughly modernised for Euro 2004 and renamed the Estádio do Bessa Séc. XXI.
A historic moment in the club's history came in the 2000–01 season, when Boavista, managed by coach Jaime Pacheco, won its only Portuguese championship to date, breaking the long-standing dominance of the so-called Big Three — Benfica, Porto and Sporting. This success earned the club a place in the UEFA Champions League in the 2001–02 season, in which Boavista advanced all the way to the second group stage of the competition — still the club's best-ever European result. The Panthers, as the team is also known, also count five Portuguese Cups and three national Super Cups among their honours.
After years of success, however, the club plunged into a serious crisis — Boavista became implicated in a nationwide refereeing corruption scandal, as a result of which it was forcibly relegated, first by one division, then by two. The club did not return to the Primeira Liga until the 2014–15 season, thanks to the efforts of returning president João Loureiro, who had previously led the club during its most glorious period. Boavista remains one of only five Portuguese clubs to have won the national championship, and its traditional rival in the Porto derby is local side FC Porto.