Vancouver's Major League Soccer team is for sale. Could the Whitecaps end up in Phoenix?

The future of the Major League Soccer team in Vancouver could have implications for soccer fans here in the Valley.

A committee of MLS owners has met to talk about what might be next for the Vancouver Whitecaps and that could include the possibility of moving the franchise. And if that happens, Phoenix seems to be one of the potential destinations.

Phoenix Rising play in the USL Championship — a tier below MLS, but the club’s owners have been trying for years to move up.

Paul Tenorio, senior writer at the Athletic joined The Show to talk more.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Paul, good morning.

PAUL TENORIO: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So what’s going on with the Whitecaps? Why are they potentially leaving British Columbia?

PAUL TENORIO: Well, the Whitecaps don’t have control of the stadium in which they play, BC Place. It’s controlled by the province. And as such, they don’t have access to many of the revenue streams that come from gameday experiences.

So the Whitecaps right now rank at or near the bottom of MLS in ticket revenue, in sponsorship revenue. They can’t sell the naming rights to the stadium. All of these areas that are critical for Major League Soccer teams, which — unlike some of the other American professional leagues — doesn’t rely on media revenue as its main driver of revenue but rather those gameday revenues.

And so it’s become quite a complex business problem for the Whitecaps, and without a stadium deal in the future and with the terms of the lease remaining even somewhat similar to what they are today in Vancouver, they just don’t see it as a viable path forward for the Whitecaps, especially as the cost of business in MLS will continue to rise.

MARK BRODIE: And am I right that this is also happening sort of in parallel with a potential sale of the team?

PAUL TENORIO: That’s correct. The Whitecaps owners put the team up for sale — the Kerfoot family especially, the main owner of the team, the majority owner of the team, was looking to divest from the team. And they have had meetings with more than 100 prospective owners or people that wanted to at least investigate the potential purchase of the club, and no bids came out of those 100 meetings with owners that would have kept the team locally.

And so they’re under a bit of a time crunch here, and the owners have stated they want to sell the team to somebody who would keep it in Vancouver, but Major League Soccer is kind of looking at its own watch and saying, "Listen, we’re running out of time here. This team is for sale, the business structure doesn’t look right, the stadium deal is not viable for where this league is going. And hey, we might have some interested investors that are in other markets that would be willing to pay and do have potential stadium deals in place.”

MARK BRODIE: So what is the feeling within MLS ownership and the other owners in terms of whether they would like to keep a team in this market or if it’s a realistic possibility that the Whitecaps could be on the move?

PAUL TENORIO: Well, I think it’s tough to say. The ownership group in Major League Soccer is so diverse across the 30 different markets. All of them have invested at different times in the league’s history, their investment horizons are completely different, their ties to the history of the league are completely different.

And so we have to acknowledge there’s kind of two sides to this, right? The first is the history. The Whitecaps franchise has existed in Vancouver since well before it was in Major League Soccer. It goes back to the 1970s in the NASL.

But there are these kind of business realities for Major League Soccer as well. And the owners of the league would benefit from a relocation because MLS is going to charge a relocation fee if it were to move the team out of Vancouver. So there’s almost this weird financial incentive, albeit not a large one, to move out of Vancouver and into another market if the deal is right.

But I do think the owners are keenly aware of what makes the soccer league special, which is the fans and the atmosphere that is completely different from what people can get at other sports like the NBA and NHL and NFL.

And when you move out of a market that’s shown such support — I mean 27,000 people were at the Whitecaps game last weekend; they had more than 45,000-50,000 for games last season; they’re one of the best teams in the league — you know, there’s no guarantee you’re going to get that support in every single market that you go to. And so there has to be this balance between the culture and the importance of fans and building a history to the league at the same time that there are these financial realities as well.

MARK BRODIE: So you have reported that if the Whitecaps were to move, that two potential landing spots could be either Las Vegas or Phoenix. Phoenix has obviously been sort of in the conversation for an MLS expansion team for several expansion cycles now, but they’ve never brought a team here. What does it look like in terms of if one or one of those is a maybe more attractive location for MLS from the league’s perspective right now?

PAUL TENORIO: Well, I think right now Las Vegas is the leader in the clubhouse. I think that’s because there is an interested party who is willing to put an offer down, and I think there is, you know, considerable interest in the Las Vegas market, and there has been for Major League Soccer’s part going back to the early 2010s, when there was a group led by Wes Edens who wanted to bring a team to Vegas; after that it was Bill Foley, the owner of the Golden Knights, that wanted to bring a team to Vegas.

So Major League Soccer has been looking at that market for a very long time, and that market is evolving rapidly, right? They gained an NFL team, looks like a baseball team is coming, there’s an NHL team there, WNBA. So this is becoming a sports destination.

Really though, this is going to boil down to who is the ownership group, how much money are they willing to put forward, how much are they willing to pay for the Whitecaps, how much are they willing to pay for a relocation fee, and what does the stadium situation look like? That is a critical part of this equation. So if Vegas looks like it has all of those things lined up, I think it does rank above.

However, to your point, there have been discussions with Phoenix in the past. There have been groups that have been interested in bringing a team to Phoenix, not just the Phoenix Rising group but other investment groups who have been known in Major League Soccer or have had discussions about bringing an expansion team to Phoenix. So I think that Phoenix is in a very strong position.

And certainly I also want to point out that this Whitecaps sale is not the only MLS team up for sale, and I think it also starts to open up discussions about what the next phase of the league looks like and whether they start talking expansion again.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right, lots more to come on this, I suspect. That is Paul Tenorio, senior writer at the Athletic. Paul, thanks for your time. I appreciate it.

PAUL TENORIO: Thanks so much for having me.