Soccer is booming, the Whitecaps are back, winning — and still need a new owner

Дата публикации: 09-07-2026 19:26:31

Is local money sniffing around? Maybe. Vibes around of the World Cup are very, very good. But good enough to secure a new future for the Caps?

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When you take a month off from playing, sometimes you need a little push to really get yourselves going.

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That’s what the Vancouver Whitecaps got Wednesday night, defeating Cavalry FC 4-1 in the first leg of their Canadian Championship quarterfinal. Making their return after 16 years to Swangard Stadium, you can be forgiven for feeling a little nostalgic for a simpler time, when the Whitecaps were a little cheaper to run. When you played at a stadium that really could hold 6,000 fans or so — that was just reality.

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Even after they moved downtown to B.C. Place and MLS, this was all a far more straightforward proposition. Today, it’s not. The Whitecaps have managed to keep punching away near the top of the league standings, both in performance and in salaries paid.

But, we’re told, this has come at great cost. The financial model of 2011, when the Whitecaps joined MLS and left Swangard, is no more. Player and travel costs are massively higher. B.C. Place’s ability to generate enough revenue for the team has stalled.

Majority owner Greg Kerfoot and minority partners Jeff Mallet, Steve Luczo and Steve Nash have been looking to sell — or at least find a new investor — for a year-and-a-half.

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And as the World Cup buzz starts to fade, the Whitecaps’ uncertainty remains. When we last checked in, there were good meetings happening between the team, the league and the government.

But there were no suitors secured. No one ready to truly sign on a dotted line, though there were a least a couple groups floating around, keeping an eye on proceedings.

One group has been interested for ages but has never shown any actual cash. Another may involve a group of local property developers, but it remains to be seen how serious they are.

Word is there may be another meeting in the days to come; one would hope it’s a meeting that solidifies the short-term future of the team at B.C. Place, better positioning the team for a prospective buyer.

As we’ve documented well here in these pages, the cost of the team’s success hasn’t tracked with the team’s ability to generate revenue. They play in a league that’s big on glitz but trailing in national revenue. There’s a global TV deal with Apple, but a Canadian observer will note that the revenues delivered to MLS teams from the Apple TV contract are really more on par with what TSN delivers to the CFL. Those numbers are fine for the nine-team northern pigskin circuit, but for a soccer league that does have the likes of Thomas Muller, Lionel Messi and Son Heung-min on the books, that’s not nearly enough TV cash to make it all balance out.

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To really make do, you’ve got to sell more ads. In the U.S., that’s easier: you just call up your local hospital network and pick a gambling website out of a hat and you stand a chance. Neither of those revenue sources are available to Canadian teams (and rightly so, who wants American privatized health care, and we get enough gambling ads already as it is).

But what it’s meant is that the Canadian teams struggle to break even. In MLS, that’s really not that unusual, given only a handful of teams are believed to generate much revenue on their own, leaving most clubs in the red. The Whitecaps, goes the team’s claims, are trailing way behind. They don’t generate anywhere near enough money anymore: they spend a ton on player salaries but economic losses the last couple of seasons have mounted, to the tens-of-millions of dollars.

The Whitecaps still need investors, even after making the final for the MLS Cup and the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Even after putting 25,000 into the stands night after night this year. Even as they’re selling tickets for their return to MLS action, first with the Leagues Cup, then back to regular-season play — indeed selling tickets so well that they could yet open up the upper bowl of B.C. Place.

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The World Cup was a smash experience for fans. There was an energy, a vitality that made people feel good. No doubt the Whitecaps want to tap into those vibes. There’s no doubt that was on display for Wednesday’s win. People like this and they want more of it.

Soccer is booming in this town. It strains credulity that MLS can’t work here. If it really can’t, with crowds as big as these, with broad interest as big as it is — then that speaks to much broader problems for the league.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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