Are the Vancouver Whitecaps moving to Las Vegas? Maybe, but probably not

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In what is not a shocking twist, Major League Soccer’s owners spoke about the Vancouver Whitecaps’ situation at their most recent meeting.

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According to a report from The Athletic, a small group of owners met earlier this month about the future of the Whitecaps and the possibility of relocation. Las Vegas, according to the reportis the leading candidate if the Caps were to leave Vancouver.

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As reports go, none of it is really that surprising. The Whitecaps have been looking for an owner, publicly, for more than a year. The search goes on. It won’t go on forever.

It’s inevitable that MLS owners would talk about what’s next at some point. And now we know they have. The Athletic suggests that a group from Las Vegas has interest in the team, though it’s not the group connected with a flashy proposal to build a sports and entertainment district in the southern Vegas suburb of Henderson. Phoenix, where the ownership of the popular second-division USL team is said to have MLS ambitions, is also suggested as a possibility.

Both, though, still feel pretty fanciful as Vancouver alternatives for the moment. Neither has an MLS-ready stadium and both have real questions about whether their communities would be interested in building one. In Las Vegas, there’s a fair bit of facility fatigue with the public: the vote to approve the Athletics’ baseball stadium was highly contentious. It came after public funds were also used to build the NFL’s Allegiant Stadium; between the two stadiums, more than $1 billion has been handed over to billionaires. There continues to be strong public opposition to both those deals.

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As for the Phoenix option, just ask a hockey fan about what it’s like trying to build an arena in the desert.

This is to say that even the leading candidates for MLS relocation are far from perfect. And surely MLS would like to put expansion teams there, while keeping their super-popular team in the place it already is.

“We are aware of today’s reporting,” the Whitecaps said in a statement on Monday. “The 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. Over the past 16 months, we have had serious conversations with more than 100 parties, and to date, no viable offer has emerged that would keep the club here.

“It remains the strong preference of this ownership group to find a solution in Vancouver. If there is a local ownership group with the vision and resources to chart a path forward, we urge them to come forward.”

The Caps’ lack of financial viability in Vancouver remains. That’s the main reason ownership has put the team up for sale. The B.C. Place lease was never a very good deal for the team, but when it was signed it was manageable.

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But as player and travel costs have exploded in the past half-decade or so, low revenue has become a huge problem. It would seem that as long as the team was relatively a break-even proposition, owner Greg Kerfoot was willing to move along. Presumably, the fact his team was only accruing value along the way helped too.

The Whitecaps’ 2011 expansion fee was reported to be US$40 million. Four years before Toronto FC paid just US$10 million. Reports said that San Diego FC paid US$500 million to join the league last season.

The case now, though, is that the losses being carried year after year are no longer tenable. And the split between costs and revenues are apparently so horrifying that dozens of prospective investors have come to take a look at the team’s books and then backed away.

CEO Axel Schuster said in February that to move up from their league-bottom position in terms of revenue to just mid-table, the club needed to make up $40 million.

“We 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,” he said at the time. The team’s deal at B.C. Place limited their ability to generate revenues beyond ticket sales.

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The team has signed a series of small sponsorships over the past couple months, such as with Erdinger beer, but the team likely needs two dozen or so more. Most of the sponsorships signed to date are believed to be worth in the hundreds of thousands, not in the millions that they need to total in the end.

“To be clear, I think it needs 25 to 30 more of these little steps, or it needs a few big steps to really get in safe water and to say ‘OK, now this club gets into more of the area of financial stability and viability,’” Schuster said after the team signed one of the early deals.

For all of us, pundits, fans, even those prospective owners — and Major League Soccer — the bad books are hard to square with the raucous atmosphere in the stands and the performance on the pitch. More than 27,000 were in the stands Saturday to take in another thrilling 3-1 win for the Whitecaps, their last home game for three months while the team gives way for the FIFA World Cup. Fans also showed mass support for saving the team, with signs and chants filling the stadium. I

That’s the reason why the report that leaked out isn’t about an imminent departure. Rest assured this is a market MLS wants to stay in. It’s big for the brand. It’s big for soccer here too. From a sporting perspective it’s working like a charm. The financials remain the problem. The Whitecaps do seem to think that if they were given the chance to operate B.C. Place they could turn into a better revenue generator that it currently is. In Germany Eintracht Frankfut took over operation of its city-owned stadium five years ago and has greatly increased revenues.

It also should not be missed that this week is the FIFA Congress. All eyes are on Vancouver. If ever there were a high-pressure moment for MLS and Whitecaps ownership to press on our municipal and provincial politicians, it’s now.

Can our politicians figure out a deal that could give the Whitecaps a future here? It would be quite the moment to do so.

— with a file from The Canadian Press

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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