The Athletic<\/a>\u00a0published a story on Monday saying MLS has told owners around the league that it is exploring relocating the team, with Las Vegas being the top candidate for the new market.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe story did not include a timeline for the move.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Neither MLS nor the Whitecaps immediately responded to a request for comment Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vancouver\u2019s current ownership group \u2014 including Greg Kerfoot, Steve Luczo, Jeff Mallett and former NBA star Steve Nash \u2014 announced the team was up for sale in December 2024 and repeatedly said the priority was keeping the Whitecaps in Vancouver. The asking price was not publicly released.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MLS\u2019s latest expansion club, San Diego FC \u2014 which began play last season \u2014 reportedly paid a US$500 million fee to join the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Toronto paid a $10 million expansion fee when it became part of the league in 2007. Vancouver reportedly paid $40 million to join four years later.<\/p>\n
Las Vegas is currently home to the Las Vegas Lights, a USL Championship team owned by former Toronto Blue Jay Jose Bautista.<\/p>\n
The report comes days after thousands of Whitecaps fans used signs and chants to express their support for the club.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A sold-out crowd of 27,589 people watched the \u2018Caps down the Colorado Rapids 3-1 on Saturday, packing B.C. Place for Vancouver\u2019s final home game ahead of this summer\u2019s FIFA World Cup.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of people marched to the stadium behind a giant banner reading \u201cSave the Caps.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once inside, more than 2,000 fans held signs with the same \u201cSave the Caps\u201d message as players walked out onto the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The paper signs were placed by Vancouver\u2019s supporters groups before the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Others brought their own visual messages of support, including a giant banner reading \u201cWe will fight for our club and we will win\u201d next to an image of a fist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chants of \u201cSave the Caps!\u201d also rang out through the stadium after Ema Lake sang the American and Canadian national anthems.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hear what\u2019s going on, but at the end of the day, that\u2019s not in our control,\u201d striker Brian White said after the game. \u201cWe love playing in Vancouver, we love the fans. But all that stuff is up to powers that are out of our control.\u201d<\/p>\n
The players are all focused on winning, not what\u2019s happening behind the scenes, said defender Tristan Blackmon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve known for a little while now that the team is up for sale. But our job at the end of the day is to get results on the pitch,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have that much of an influence on what goes on big picture in terms of where the team goes, if it stays. All we can do as players is put on good performances like we did tonight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most we can do as players is try to represent the community and everybody who comes out here really well. So we\u2019re going to keep on trying to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u2018Caps currently sit second in the MLS standings with an 8-1-0 record and are coming off their most successful season in the league.<\/p>\n
Last year, Vancouver was crowned Western Conference champions before falling to Lionel Messi\u2019s Inter Miami in the championship game.<\/p>\n
Despite the on-field success, the Whitecaps still sat at the bottom of the league in team revenue, trailing clubs in the middle of the standings by US$40 million, CEO Axel Schuster said in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are really concerned that, after such a successful season, the gap is even becoming bigger, that this at some point will not be manageable for us anymore,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schuster and MLS commissioner Don Garber said late last year that the club\u2019s lease at B.C. Place Stadium was not sustainable because of limited scheduling flexibility and restricted revenue from food and beverage sales.<\/p>\n
The team signed a memorandum of understanding with the City of Vancouver in December over exploring the viability of building a new stadium on the city\u2019s eastern edge, then agreed to a new, one-year deal with the Crown corporation that owns and operates B.C. Place in February.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schuster said at the time that the new lease did not solve the Whitecaps\u2019 long-term financial viability issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be clear, I think it needs 25 to 30 more of these little steps, or it needs a few big steps to really get into safe water and to say \u2018OK, now this club gets into more of the area of financial stability and viability,’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Originally a North American Soccer League team, the Whitecaps have been part of Vancouver\u2019s sports fabric since 1974.<\/p>\n
The club won the NASL title in 1979 and, when players returned to Vancouver, about 100,000 people lined Robson Street to cheer them on.<\/p>\n
Kerfoot, a Vancouver entrepreneur, bought the club in 2002 when it was a USL First Division team, and was joined by the rest of the ownership group in 2008 with the intention of making the \u2018Caps an MLS team.<\/p>\n
The Whitecaps played their first game in the new league in March 2011.<\/p>\n
The club has experienced a series of highs and lows since.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some prominent Canadian national players have come up through the \u2018Caps academy system during the current ownership group\u2019s tenure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Star left-back Alphonso Davies joined the residency program as a teen and broke through in MLS in 2016 at age 15 before the Whitecaps transferred him to German powerhouse Bayern Munich in 2018.<\/p>\n
The Whitecaps weathered a scandal in 2019 when allegations emerged that a former coach with both the women\u2019s club team and Canada\u2019s under-20 women\u2019s program had assaulted multiple players. Bob Birarda was handed a two-year sentence in November 2022 after he pled guilty to three counts of sexual assault and one count of sexual touching involving four teens.<\/p>\n
FIFA vice president Victor Montagliani has said moving the Whitecaps would be \u201ca bruise\u201d on the city, especially as Vancouver prepares to host seven World Cup games this summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo lose an MLS club on the back of the World Cup would be a capital crime, in my opinion,\u201d he said at a Vancouver Board of Trade event last June.<\/p>\n
Vancouver Whitecaps respond to report<\/p>\n
In a written statement, the Vancouver Whitecaps say that it is aware of the report.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe club has faced well-documented structural challenges around stadium economics, venue access, and revenue limitations that have made it difficult to attract buyers committed to keeping the team in Vancouver,\u201d the team said.<\/p>\n
It adds that it has talked to more than 100 parties in the past 16 months, but \u201cno viable offer has emerged that would keep the club here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The current owners say it prefers to stay in Metro Vancouver and urges interested investors to contact the team. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new report says Major League Soccer (MLS) is looking to move the Whitecaps out of Vancouver.\u00a0 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-633019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}