FILE - Fans of the Vancouver Whitecaps MLS shot squad rally to support the squad successful Vancouver, April 30, 2026, extracurricular the 76th FIFA Congress successful Vancouver, British Columbia. Photo by: Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press via AP, File
Associated Press
Saturday, June 20, 2026 | 2 a.m.
SEATTLE — MLS Commissioner Don Garber said before the United States bushed Australia at the World Cup on Friday that the Vancouver Whitecaps request to person a caller stadium woody successful bid to support the nine successful Vancouver.
“We’re committed to keeping the squad present if we person a viable stadium project,” Garber said, “which we don’t person now.”
Financial hurdles person deed the nine contempt its occurrence connected the pitch. BC Place, the Whitecaps’ location since 2011, is government-owned and operated by B.C. Pavilion Corporation, restricting the nine from imaginable gross streams.
In April, Vancouver politician Ken Sim said the metropolis has offered abstraction astatine Hastings Park connected its eastbound broadside for the squad to physique a stadium.
“Now, we look the hard part,” Sim said astatine the time. “BC Place is owned and operated by the Provincial Government. In fact, it’s the lone stadium owned and operated by a authorities recovered anyplace successful the MLS. In bid for the squad to enactment successful Vancouver, the Whitecaps and Province indispensable motion a span woody that volition let BC Place to go viable successful the adjacent word portion a caller stadium tin beryllium designed and built.”
Scheduling flexibility has besides been a problem, arsenic the Whitecaps had to forfeit home-field vantage for a 2024 playoff crippled owed to a motocross lawsuit taking spot astatine the stadium.
“We privation to support the squad there, but we can’t bash that unless the governmental influencers and their entities enactment unneurotic thing that volition let Vancouver to not beryllium astatine the bottommost of the list,” Garber said. “They don’t person the tools to beryllium successful.”
The Whitecaps beryllium atop the Western Conference standings during the MLS’ World Cup break. They reached their archetypal MLS Cup Final successful 2025 and person won 4 consecutive Canadian championships.
The instrumentality enactment has reflected that success. The Whitecaps fertile eighth among 30 clubs successful mean attendance this season, and they led the league successful attendance during past year’s playoffs.
With the stadium concern inactive a obstruction for fiscal success, a radical came guardant successful April to suggest relocating the franchise to Las Vegas.
“I deliberation the city, which has its issues, that firm assemblage that’s not been precise supportive of the club, is present recognizing what shot and the Whitecaps really mean to the city,” Garber said. “We are a precise applicable nine that doesn’t person a bully concern model.”
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