Time is running out for the Whitecaps in Vancouver

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It’s hard to fathom how a team at the top of the league, pulling in 25,000 fans, could be at serious risk of departure.

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But the silence from the Vancouver Whitecaps about their future, be it a new owner or a plan for their own stadium, is making it clear that a bad future is becoming more likely.

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Fans are rightly planning to rally before Saturday’s home match vs. Colorado at B.C. Place to call for their team to be saved.

A team this popular, this connected to the community, has to have a future here. It’s folly to think otherwise.

But like everything in Vancouver sports, there is no easy explanation for why we’re sitting here, pondering a future without our leading North American team.

Here are few things to understand about how the Whitecaps have found themselves twisting in the wind.

No stadium

In the long term, the Whitecaps need a stadium they can control. And there is just no clear vision for that stadium future right now, even if there is the possibility of putting one at Hastings Park a half-decade or more down the road.

It’s a tricky concept for a number of reasons, chiefly because it would change the nature of the neighbourhood, and given that the talk going back years was that Hastings Park should become greener, building a stadium and surrounding entertainment district would fly directly in face of that goal.

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You can’t just build a stadium — you need things for fans to do and places for them to go, like bars and restaurants. If you’re putting in bars and restaurants, you need ongoing customers beyond just the occasional soccer match, which means also building residential units.

And if you are building residential, you’re likely going to have to consult with local First Nations.

Not to mention that there is no rapid transit to Hastings Park (though that could change if the plan to build an extension to the North Shore were to bear fruit, but that’s also likely decades away).

Costs

This, more than anything, is the driver of the story. When the Whitecaps joined Major League Soccer in 2011, it was the Beckham era. But it was also still a very different time. Teams were smaller. There weren’t juggernauts like Inter Miami and LAFC in the league, teams who have glitz and glamour as part of their identity.

When Whitecaps ownership agreed to put their Waterford stadium ambitions on hold and instead sign on as a key tenant at a renovated B.C. Place, having a home that didn’t deliver big revenues was less of a problem. It was easier to compete in MLS even while being a low-revenue team.

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But with the explosion of player quality and the addition of more designated players, putting a squad on the field has become far more expensive.

Revenue

Before getting into the challenges of making money at B.C. Place, understand that the biggest sources of commercial revenue in MLS — basically, ways you make money that isn’t from tickets — are two things that just aren’t available to the Whitecaps: health care and gambling.

Health care is a massive industry in the U.S., and it spends huge amounts on advertising. This obviously doesn’t happen in Canada. Gambling advertising is allowed in Canada, but in B.C. it is limited to BCLC and PlayNow. What money they do spend on sports advertising is almost exclusively limited to the Canucks (one source said on the order of about $7 million).

Anyway, take those sources away. We can see what the Whitecaps are left to work with: a smattering of partnerships they have put together.

They are obviously working hard, but the target figure identified by Axel Schuster earlier this year remains daunting — $40 million just to get to league average in revenue generation.

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So how about running the stadium?

In the long run, the Whitecaps need their own stadium. They have been clear on this. Run your own stadium and you can host concerts — concerts have very low overhead and are highly profitable.

But in the short term, it’s clear the team would like a shot at taking over B.C. Place from PavCo. Last season, the Caps put 600,000 fans through the turnstiles. Take away 100,000 of those fans because they are on free or discounted tickets and you have 500,000 paying fans.

The provincial government has agreed to return their stadium profits to the Whitecaps as part of their lease for this season. Last year, they say they made $1.5 million off Whitecaps games. Quick math here tells you that the province made just $3 per fan. The Whitecaps, you can bet, believe they can do better.

This is community

The economy is in tough shape, for many reasons. The stadium needs to be busy. There is little doubt that the community derives emotional benefit from having a popular sports team. There are restaurants that lean on Caps fans.

I think we can appreciate why the government won’t want to be seen to be giving a handout to billionaires, but surely there is a solution that can help the team find a better revenue situation while also lending good vibes to the government that helped “save” the Whitecaps.

Time is running short. A plan needs to appear. Surely there’s a win-win here.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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