FIFA VP urges politicians to save Vancouver Whitecaps amid 'concerning' Las Vegas bid

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Tom Weber | Editor

FIFA vice president Victor Montagliani has urged local politicians to keep the Vancouver Whitecaps in town amid a formal bid to relocate the Major League Soccer franchise to Las Vegas.

This week, the relocation saga surrounding the Whitecaps has not merely rumbled on, it has escalated and veritably exploded. At the start of the week, it emerged that MLS was already in active discussions with interested buyers.

Crucially, though, not one of these prospective owners has the intention of keeping the Whitecaps in Vancouver. Several groups from Las Vegas had come forward, while the possibility of interest from Phoenix was also not ruled out.

Since then, fresh news has come in thick and fast. The Athletic reports that an investor group led by 30-year-old Grant Gustavson, the son of billionaire Tamara Gustavson, has tabled a formal bid to move the team to Vegas.

Meanwhile, MLS Commissioner Don Garber jetted into Vancouver for FIFA's 76th Congress to hold discussions with stakeholders and local politicians. The league's preference, at least publicly, is to keep the team in the city.

Las Vegas bid "very concerning"

Despite the offer from Vegas, all relevant parties insist that the situation has not yet reached a point of no return. MLS will take its time deliberating the bid and will only make a final decision once it becomes clearer if the Whitecaps can find a solution that will allow them to remain in the city.

Among the people Garber met with during his trip to the city was the British Columbia Premier David Eby. It is the Provincial Government of BC, via local organisation PavCo, that owns the Caps' stadium, BC Place, which is the root of the issue.

Garber held "constructive talks" with Eby and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, but further discussions and meetings are required. Eby has already announced that handing over the stadium to the team is "not on the table" because of a lack of interest on the Caps' part.

The current arrangement is "untenable," according to Garber, because the club only receive around 12% of matchday revenues, resulting in gigantic income shortfalls compared to the average MLS team. CEO Axel Schuster previously put the deficit at $40 million CAD.

Sim, who put the onus on finding a solution firmly on the Provincial Government in a statement earlier this week, described the news of the Vegas bid as "obviously very concerning."

His call for the Government to do more to save the Caps was echoed by FIFA vice president Victor Montagliani, even before the news of Gustavson's bid was disclosed.

"The frustrating part for me is the fans get it, our soccer community gets it. But what I’m hoping now, with this alarm bell that’s gone off, is that our politicians wake up to it," Montagliani told The Athletic.

"It is the biggest community asset we have. And the other professional clubs are the same, they’ve been around forever - the Lions and the Canucks. So, it’s very frustrating that leaders, mainly political leaders, don’t get it.

"They don’t get the equity of these clubs. And the virtue signaling of saying, ‘Oh, taxpayer money.’ Well, if you’re really worried about the taxpayer, you’d do a better job in other areas."

Montagliani said that it is "100%" up to the Provincial Government to find a solution because "they’re the landholder of the building. So they need to figure out a way."

He added: "And listen, there’s some good people there too that run the building. I think they will figure out a way to give [the Whitecaps] a better [deal]. I mean, [Garber] has been very clear, the economics don’t work."

#SaveTheCaps movement grows

Bloomberg claims that the Caps have lost more than $300m since joining MLS in 2011, with the BC Place deal described as the "biggest drag" on the team.

The new lease, hastily signed earlier this year, expires after the 2026 MLS season, so the Caps currently do not have a home stadium for 2027. Because ownership has been trying to sell the team since December 2024, no one has come forward to privately fund a new club-owned stadium.

This is despite the existence of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the City of Vancouver, which gives the Caps the option to acquire land at the Hastings Racecourse on which to build their own arena.

The Caps played at the temporary Empire Field in Hastings Park in 2011, so the area can support a large soccer stadium. But with no one to pay for it, there have been no developments on this front since the MOU was signed last December.

Ownership has claimed that they have held talks with "more than 100" interested parties, but no "viable" bid has materialised that would see the Caps remain in Vancouver.

Montagliani believes that finding a solution should be a "no-brainer" to the Provincial Government. “[The Caps] are the biggest tenant in the building. It drives the most people, foot traffic, to that area. It is a no-brainer."

Caps fans used the FIFA Congress to try and get the message about the club's predicament out to the world as best as possible. A protest was staged on Thursday, but it was overshadowed by Gianni Infantino's gut-wrenching attempt at reconciling Israel and Palestine during the event.

Still, the #SaveTheCaps movement continues to grow, thankfully. More than 9,500 people have signed the wall on savethecaps.com, while the petition of former goalkeeper David Ousted has grown to over 16,000 signatures.

Former Caps coach Vanni Sartini posted a picture of himself on his Instagram account wearing a #SaveTheCaps shirt, with the caption: "Football (or soccer, call it what you want) is love! And football clubs belong to the fans who love them and the communities that they represent.

"We are biased because we love the city and the Caps' fans, but the Whitecaps are part of the fabric of Vancouver, and it's impossible to imagine the team not being there in the future.

"Save the Caps!"

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Written by

Tom Weber | Editor

Tom Weber is a multilingual sports writer who specialises in European football as part of his freelance work for FootballTransfers.

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