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Vancouver Whitecaps’ German CEO, Axel Schuster, pauses after FourFourTwo asks a pretty direct question 20 minutes into our half hour chat. Does the current situation with the club he is in charge of keep him awake at night?
“I'm lucky enough, I'm sleeping well. But if I have some off time, I mostly go out for a walk at the seawall. Lately… say a couple of years ago, I would listen to a podcast, maybe some German news or a podcast about European soccer just to stay in the loop.
“Now I notice that I sometimes have to go back three or four times because I'm not listening. I didn't catch something. My thoughts are somewhere else.”
Uber Coup
Schuster is a smart operator who spent 20 years in the German Bundesliga, working alongside the likes of Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel at Mainz 05. Since joining the Whitecaps in 2019, the club has gone from bang average to banging at the door of the top competitions like MLS Cup and the Concacaf Champions Cup (they finished second in both last season).
Last summer, he persuaded his fellow countryman Thomas Müller to join him in British Columbia on a free transfer from Bayern Munich after the Club World Cup. An Uber-coup that is paying big dividends on the pitch. But off the pitch, dividends aren’t so forthcoming, and that is a major league problem for the future of the club in Vancouver.
FourFourTwo has travelled to British Columbia to meet Schuster, local journalists, key fan groups and even Whitecaps’ players to ask some big questions around the biggest story in MLS right now: the potential relocation of their club.
“Ahhh. If you say that [this is the biggest story in MLS right now] that sounds really good to me, I wouldn't say it because it's not our mentality to say we are the biggest story," Schuster says. But in reality, Whitecaps owners, staff, fans, and players should be framing this as the biggest talking point. It needs attention. In the last four weeks, the story has accelerated rapidly, but is it too late?
For sale
Schuster plays the role of a doctor delivering terminal news during our conversation inside his box at BC Place, an hour before the Whitecaps kicked off a league game vs New York City FC in April. While he is in no way enjoying delivering bad news, he doesn’t shy away from it. He’s a professional doing his job. But the pressure is clearly huge, and time is rapidly running out.
The situation picked up pace earlier this month. The club has been for sale since the end of 2024, which was the moment the four-person ownership group effectively admitted they had taken things as far as they could, and couldn’t continue to swallow annual losses.
Understandable. Having brought the Whitecaps into MLS in 2011, the four-person ownership group (Greg Kerfoot, Jeff Mallett, Steve Luczo and Steve Nash) is rumoured to have absorbed cumulative operating losses of over $250 million.
Kerfoot’s name comes up frequently as we speak to people across the city for this story, and every time it’s positive, with locals grateful for his investment and support for local football. He’s notoriously private, and in the billionaire bracket, having sold a software company for $820 million in 2003.
Mallett is a former President/COO of Yahoo. He also has stakes in the San Francisco Giants (baseball) and Derby County. There are rumours Mallett would be open to remaining as a Whitecaps stakeholder under the right circumstances.
Past reports have suggested that on matchdays, Whitecaps are entitled to as little as 12% of the take at BC Place
Of the two Steves, Luczo is the Executive Chairman of Seagate Technology, while Nash is an NBA legend and Canadian sporting icon. Not involved in day-to-day operations, Nash's presence has always been a wow factor for Whitecaps supporters.
It’s no secret that most MLS clubs aren’t profitable, but Vancouver definitely isn’t. They have a revenue leak they can’t plug.
There are two major problems at play. The first is stadium-related in that they are secondary tenants where they play. Though they’re not alone in this arrangement in MLS, it’s one that is becoming increasingly rare across the league.
Other secondary tenants include New York City FC, who move into their own 'soccer-specific' stadium next year, Chicago Fire, who broke ground on a new stadium in March, targeting a summer 2028 opening, and San Diego, the baby of MLS, having only begun playing as the 30th team last year. They rent a college football stadium, but it was only built in 2022 and with MLS in mind. There’s safe standing, favourable sightlines and a 35,000 capacity, regarded as the league sweet spot.
Clubs like Atlanta United, Seattle Sounders and New England Revolution play in giant 60,000+ arenas built primarily for NFL, but often these are ‘curtained’ to bring them closer to the 35,000 mark. Crucially, their owners also own the NFL teams that play there, meaning each is effectively a tenant of their own sister company, therefore all matchday revenue comes back to the owners.
The Whitecaps current home, BC Place, is owned by the Province of British Columbia (via a Crown corporation called PavCo), with the team’s current lease running until the end of the year. It's a 54,000-seater stadium hosting everything from Taylor Swift concerts and monster truck rallies to the International Boat Show.
Past reports have suggested that on matchdays, Whitecaps are entitled to as little as 12% of the take at BC Place. FourFourTwo understands that a short-term agreement is in place this season whereby all matchday revenue, after operating costs, goes back to the Whitecaps in a bid to support the club while they search for new ownership.
Seven World Cup games are taking place here in June and July, including two guaranteed Canada matches and a potentially historic Canadian knockout fixture if results go a certain way. The Whitecaps are having to play all their games away from home during this period.
Far from ideal, and it’s happened before. In 2024, they were forced to play a crucial home playoff fixture away as they were bumped by a pre-existing booking (the Invictus Games). So, not only are they missing out on matchday revenue (the majority of which goes to the Province), but it’s also, at times, a massively disruptive arrangement.
Climate, Tradition, Thomas Muller
On paper, Vancouver is a soccer utopia: an ideal climate in which to play the game (comfortable summers, fleeting winter freezes) and there’s tradition too. A professional club has played in the city since 1974 where there’s an incredible mix of city life and outdoors – handy for attracting Thomas Müllers. But economically, football just doesn’t seem to fit.
In addition to the stadium issue, Schuster spells out problem number two: “In terms of economic strengths, how many [company] headquarters do you have here? How many dollars do you have in this town? It's not big. Most of the business in Canada is in Toronto.
“We're living here in a region that's famous for its nature. That itself doesn't get you a lot of business dollars. It's also a very resource-based province. You have agriculture, forestry, and a few mining companies, but they often do their mining not even in the province or close to the city.
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“If you look at the top 50 companies in British Columbia, you will find 10 to 15 government-owned companies. The outstanding ones are probably our main sponsor, Telus Telecommunication, and Lululemon and Aritzia.”
The latter two are billion-dollar athleisure and fashion retail companies founded and headquartered in the city, but neither can sponsor the Whitecaps, despite probably wanting to. MLS negotiates major contracts like TV and apparel deals as a single block. The apparel deal is currently with Adidas who manufacture all 30 MLS club kits, and that’s a conflict of interest for Lululemon and Aritzia. Two major prospective Whitecaps sponsors blocked.
Away from yoga pants and ‘super puff’ jackets, the Whitecaps big commercial opportunities lie with the random forestry and mining companies who, understandably, don’t see the value in an MLS club’s right sleeve. Revenue-wise, Vancouver are rock bottom of the league and running out of seams to mine.
Schuster continues, bleakly, like a vet explaining the dog's cancer has spread. “The Canadian dollar conversion to the US dollar hasn't developed well for the three Canadian clubs. We only make two-thirds of what US clubs make because we are making the Canadian dollar, but we have to spend the full dollar on every cost because we pay in US.”
When FourFourTwo asks (naively) about the prospect of the Whitecaps broadening their market beyond British Columbia, Schuster transitions from vet with bad news to pitying primary school teacher. “Yeah… no [laughs]. The natural end [for our market] is the border because that's the US. Yes, you could attract a US sponsor, but the problem is we are not such an open market like the European Union.
“In German football, it doesn't matter if they have a Spanish or Italian brand sponsoring them because there's not even a border, you can go in each direction. Some of the MLS sponsors we can't even use in Canada because they can't operate in Canada.
Revenue-wise, Vancouver are rock bottom of the league and running out of seams to mine.
“We have a border to the south – it's tougher to get from here to the US than from Germany to England. On the other side, we have the ocean; there's nothing till Japan. To the other side [north], we have the mountains. That's why real estate is so expensive, because the city can't grow anywhere. If you look, Los Angeles and other cities on the West Coast, they have grown out everywhere; this is impossible in Vancouver.
“Naturally, it's over. It’s the same for other sports. If you look at the Vancouver Canucks [ice hockey], who are playing in the biggest sport in Canada, and you compare them on the corporate sponsorship side, they have way, way more challenges than the team from Toronto. The Canucks make their corporate dollars from literally three or four big deals that are local companies, and they invest heavily because hockey here is like the Premier League.”
“It comes down to how long an ownership can continue to support [the Whitecaps] and fund it out of their pockets, how long can you wait, when is the turning point, and when is the point where you say, ‘We can't do any more, is there somebody else who wants to do it?’ So far, we couldn't find somebody and I would say we have checked a lot of options and we haven't been successful.
The ‘R’ word
“Relocation is not a word that we really use, but it's, of course, naturally the last option, and I still hope it doesn't come to it, but we're 18 months in [since the club was first listed for sale] and we are definitely closer to it [relocation] than we have been at the beginning.”
It seems the Whitecaps need a number of things to happen to stay alive. A person, or group, to buy the club from its current owners (current estimated valuation $450m USD). That group/person then needs to privately fund a new, soccer-specific stadium. Lower-end projection: $350m (Inter Miami), higher-end: $750m (New York City FC, Chicago Fire). All three of those clubs' stadiums have been funded without taxpayer money. Given a stadium project like that could take several years to happen, new ownership would need to swallow losses for that period.
Napkin mathematics: before the Whitecaps can properly start pocketing all its matchday revenue, a new ownership group’s outgoings could feasibly approach the $1 billion mark. On top of this, a solution must be sought on the commercial side, which will require a combination of extremely creative thinking and generous local organisations digging deep for patriotic reasons rather than marketing ones.
A public statement issued by the Whitecaps shortly after FourFourTwo’s visit, as the relocation issue flared, confirmed: “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. If there is a local ownership group with the vision and resources to chart a path forward, we urge them to come forward.”
Before the Whitecaps can properly start pocketing all its matchday revenue, a new ownership group’s outgoings could feasibly approach the $1 billion mark.
As Schuster stares out into the slowly filling stadium, FFT ask how realistic the prospect of Vancouver Whitecaps being in MLS when the next World Cup takes place in 2030 is.
“I don't want to be the person who's not optimistic, but on the other side, I'm also saying 2030 is so far away I can't bet on that. I wouldn't bet on that.”
We leave Schuster’s box slightly stunned by the gloomy economic context he’s provided and settle in to watch the team play in front of more than 25,000 people inside BC Place. Their average attendance for 2026 is 24,189 – 25% up year-on-year.
At half-time, we’re introduced to a Vancouver Whitecaps legend, former player Carl Valentine, who chats to us over a beer. Born in Manchester, Valentine signed for the club as a 20-year-old in 1979 and basically never left. “I was at Oldham, Jimmy Frizzell, the Scottish manager, came in and said, ‘We've sold you to the Vancouver Whitecaps’. It was £100,000, a lot of money in them days for Oldham!”
Valentine linked up with a contingent of British ex-pats in the Whitecaps squad: Willie Johnson, Trevor Whymark, Kevin Hector, Roger Kenyon, Ray Lewington and Alan Ball. The club made the North American Soccer League (NASL) Playoffs, beating a New York Cosmos side that contained Carlos Alberto and Franz Beckenbauer in the semi-finals.
Then they defeated Rodney Marsh’s Tampa Bay Rowdies in the final, becoming the city's first sports team to ever win a major North American title. “We had a parade, and they estimated over 100,000 people turned out.”
In the early '80s, Peter Beardsley joined the squad and played over 70 times for the Whitecaps. “He was a meat and potatoes kind of guy,” smiles Valentine. “When he came over, I think one of the first meals he ordered was a French onion soup, without the cheese and without the onions! He didn't drink, he just loved to play.”
The NASL folded in 1984, and Valentine returned to England to play for West Brom, but returned to North America a year later, signing for Cleveland Force in the indoor league (“that's where the money was”). In 1986, he returned to Vancouver to play for the newly formed Vancouver 86ers, who took up the baton from the Whitecaps. Valentine made 244 more appearances for the club.
“We played in the Canadian Soccer League, which was semi-pro, but it kept the game alive here. We won four straight championships. The 86ers went into the A-League after the CSL folded in '92, and that's when they changed the name back to the Whitecaps.”
‘You have so much history here’
Valentine is now a club ambassador and remains philosophical about the future of the club. “We've been in this situation before, you've got to believe that somewhere along the line someone is going to invest again because you have so much history here – look at the atmosphere, the people that support it.
“When I came back as a club ambassador, I got to thank a lot of people who supported me when I was 20 years old, because I don't remember feeling homesick. They now tell me stories about how their dad took them to a game, and now, they're taking their grandkids to the game. It just means so much to the community. There's a lot of good reasons for keeping the club around, and I fully believe that'll happen.”
Heading back out for the second half, we watch Müller at close quarters. He has a quiet game by his standards, but is clearly an influential figure, cajoling, organising and inspiring team-mates. Another Vancouver midfielder catches the eye, Jeevan Badwal. A local academy graduate, born and raised in nearby Surrey to Indian parents. Just 20 years old, last season was his breakout year.
Now a first-team regular, he takes some big tackles, makes some of his own and is involved in some creative moments. During and immediately after the game we notice Müller speaking passionately to him on the pitch with his hands on both of his shoulders. Before we leave the stadium, we log a request with Vancouver’s media team to interview Badwal. How must he feel about the ‘R’ word?
We've been in this situation before, you've got to believe that somewhere along the line someone is going to invest again because you have so much history here
Outside BC Place, we’ve arranged to meet Ciaran Nicoll, president and secretary of the Vancouver Southsiders supporters group, who have around 500 active members, for a post-match pint at Batch, a pop-up beer patio in the shadow of the stadium. Nicoll is a Scottish ex-pat who has lived in Vancouver for eight years.
A lifelong Celtic fan, he shifted his football passion from The Celts to The Caps when he arrived and was recently appointed Southsiders President and Secretary. Sporting a designer cap, overshirt, shorts, smart Adidas trainers and no club colours, there isn’t much Canadian about him. His background as a knowledgeable British football fan turned MLS supporters group leader makes him an interesting filter to observe Vancouver’s situation through.
“I think if the league tried to move our club five years ago, it probably would have went without an issue because there wasn't a whole lot of support behind the team. The culture wasn't great, but we've been building that for the last five years. The MLS is striving for legitimacy amongst world leagues, right? Getting rid of a team that's your oldest club, is that how you do that?”
Watershed moment
Sanctioning a franchise move is a bit of a watershed moment for MLS, who haven’t relocated a club in 20 years. In 2006, the San Jose Earthquakes relocated to Texas to become the Houston Dynamo. Much like the situation in Vancouver, a stadium dispute triggered the move. San Jose’s then owners were unable to secure a soccer-specific venue and felt the team was financially unviable.
There was a close call in 2017 when the owner of Columbus Crew announced plans to move their team to Austin, Texas. A massive grassroots movement, ‘Save The Crew’, mobilised gaining support from fans of other MLS clubs. Combined with legal pressure from the state of Ohio, a compromise was found. A local group bought the Crew to keep them in Columbus, and the original owner was granted a new expansion team, which became Austin FC.
In European football, relocations are virtually non-existent, with clubs viewed as cultural community institutions rather than business-led franchises that can be moved like chess pieces. If they do happen, they carry with them the baggage of a huge scandal (Wimbledon/MK Dons 2002).
‘Save The Crew’ was interesting, a European-style reaction to a North American sports problem that ultimately saved their club. A week after FourFourTwo’s visit to Canada, Nicoll and The Southsiders launched ‘Save The Caps’ via a pre-game march to their match vs Colorado Rapids, their final home game until 2 August due to the World Cup taking up residency inside BC Place in June and July.
Signs of solidarity have since been unveiled by fans of Seattle Sounders and, unsurprisingly, Columbus Crew during their own home games. This support is vital as there is something of a ‘relocation wave’ happening among North American sports lately, after almost a decade of stability.
Fear and Loathing
Concerningly, moves of Arizona Coyotes to Salt Lake City (NHL), Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas (NFL) and Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas (MLB) were each driven by stadium issues. The lure of Vegas is a problem for Whitecaps fans. Flashy stadium + tourist city = dollar signs in the eyes of MLS owners. “As much as I want to believe it, my club is not a real club,” says Nicoll, soberingly. “It's a franchise.”
As depressing as it was inevitable, a formal bid to relocate the Whitecaps to Vegas landed with the league office on 30 April. An investment group led by billionaire Grant Gustavson (who inherited his wealth from his grandfather's Public Storage empire) said the five magic words: privately-financed, soccer-specific stadium.
In Europe, clubs don’t get relocated if they hit financial difficulty; they go bust and often a Phoenix club emerges. AFC Wimbledon, Hereford, Bury FC are examples. I ask Nicoll if he could see a Phoenix club situation for the Whitecaps if the worst happened.
“Oh absolutely. We would stand against any sort of relocation, but we would have our own club. Without a question of doubt, the culture is here.” In the same breath, he admits no discussions among fans have taken place yet, but “it's probably something that we do need to think about.”
As much as I want to believe it, my club is not a real club; it's a franchise
Nicoll explains that Whitecaps fans seem to fall into certain camps. Upbeat fans like himself, who are clinging to positive signs and taking action via movements like Save The Caps, hoping for good news soon. There’s casual Whitecaps fans: “Maybe 50% of the people at the game today are just people who are looking for something to do”, he points out. Then there is what Nicoll calls “the Doomers”.
“I was at the MLS Cup final in Miami [last year] and walking back to the train station with one guy, and he was like: ‘I think we've just watched our team play their last game’ Some people think it's done.”
He brings up the Canadian Premier League, a professional division of nine clubs that gets around 3,500 fans per game on average. An interesting side note is that the CPL is currently the global testing ground for the most significant change to the offside law in nearly a century, Arsene Wenger’s ‘daylight offside’ rule.
“A lot of the doomers have seen this [relocation] coming for a long time. There is a team [in the CPL] called Vancouver FC, but they're from Langley, which is 30 miles away. A lot of people think the CPL is where Whitecaps are headed, but it's a much lower level.
“If Whitecaps go [to another city], Toronto and Montreal need to be looking at what they're doing because Montreal are the worst team in MLS. Toronto are no good either and only get 10 to 15,000 a game.”
Could the tough border between the US and Canada, not to mention recent political tension, and an unfavourable return on the Canadian dollar, have the three MLS clubs thinking seriously about the CPL? Right now, that’s a reach. But long-term, it could be an option.
The ramifications of relocating the Whitecaps to a non-Canadian city would be immense for Canadian football. Vancouver FC’s academy system in the CPL is not as developed as the Whitecaps system, which produced Alphonso Davies, the most successful homegrown player in Canadian football history. That structure would immediately vanish if the Whitecaps are relocated.
‘We don't really talk about it’
The day after speaking with Nicoll, FourFourTwo is in an Uber heading west out of the city towards the University of British Columbia campus, home of the National Soccer Development Centre, the location where Whitecaps train.
Our request to chat with the latest star of their legendary academy system, Javeen Badwal, has been granted, and we’ve been promised a 20-minute interview. Before we sit down with Badwal, we’re given a tour of the facility, walking past various members of the Whitecaps current squad as they eat lunch in the canteen, watch Manchester United vs Leeds on TVs in communal areas, head for English lessons and take saunas.
The team’s Danish Head coach, Jesper Sørensen, walks past and apologises that he isn’t shaking hands today due to an illness he’s been carrying, but he shares a joke that he hasn’t played the formation ‘FourFourTwo’ in a while.
The facility is simple, but has everything a professional team need. Images from the Whitecaps 50-year history adorn the wall, including a mural of images from the 1979 NASL title win. On another, the words ‘SINCE 1974’ are written, with the six badges the club have used throughout the years.
Players see this everyday, but how conscious are they that it could all be leaving Vancouver if a solution isn’t found soon? In the team meeting room, we sit down with Badwal who grew up in nearby Surrey and joined Whitecaps academy when he was 13.
“Honestly, we actually don't talk about it a lot,” he admits. “It might come up here and there, but as players, we don't really talk about it because we're so dead set on our season. That [relocation] is more of an upstairs thing.
“It's obviously a big deal for us, where are we going to play? [in the future] But I think overall we're always looking week by week, and what we can do game by game.”
For Badwal, a local who grew up watching the team before actually playing for them, a move to somewhere like Las Vegas would be particularly heartbreaking and difficult. “I still live at home – I need my mom’s cooking!” he smiles.
“Surrey's home for me. Even if it's an hour drive I wake up early and just come here. I get to be with family. I get to be with people I'm close with on my street and family that's close to me in Surrey. So it's nice living here.”
It's obviously a big deal for us, where are we going to play?
The timing is also tough for him. He made his debut for Canada in January, playing 27 minutes in a friendly vs Guatemala, having been named in the senior squad by Jesse Marsch. Relocation is an unwanted distraction.
“I have a great coach, great team, someone like Thomas Müller helps a lot too. It's amazing because he'll come up to me in moments in the games or after the game and tell me things I can work on or things I've done well. It’s great for me because I'm still young, and he's obviously been one of the best players in the game, and he's so smart. If he’s giving me information, it must mean that he really trusts me. That just means a lot and gets my confidence up. It's just an amazing feeling.
“He's such a big leader, and he actually doesn't bring it [the relocation] up or nothing like that. He just keeps on going, week by week, game by game, he's telling us to look forward and just keep on playing.
“It did startle me a little bit when we first saw it [the relocation news], but I think as a team, when we see, ‘Oh, we might get relocated’ and that some things might change, it doesn’t really bring us down. In the changing room, it doesn't come up. We just stay positive, keep on going, and the results really show that we're looking forward and we're obviously hungry to keep on winning."
Last ditch attempt
A few weeks after speaking to Badwal, Nicoll, Schuster and a number of other fans, media and officials, on and off the record across the city, an important meeting took place at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in downtown Vancouver that local media described as “last-ditch”.
Attendees included representatives from three levels of government, local First Nations groups, FIFA, plus Axel Schuster and Jeff Mallett, one of the club’s four majority owners. The next day they issued a statement pledging “a unified commitment from all partners to keep the Whitecaps in Vancouver for generations to come.”
The statement continued: “The City, Province, Federal Government, Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, PavCo, and private partners are aligned and working together within a positive framework to deliver an even better future for soccer in our city. That includes improving the game day economic model at BC Place, exploring additional sponsorship opportunities, and advancing work on potential sites for a new stadium and development.
“Let’s be clear: Vancouver is open for business. We are doing everything we can to keep the Whitecaps here, and we are committed to building a long-term solution that reflects the scale, ambition, and global future of this city.”
Another statement, but still no solution. Yes, it's a vow by some influential people to make the club a more attractive proposition financially, but long-term, they still need an ownership group to come forward who can buy the club, who want to keep them in Vancouver and have the means to build a soccer-specific stadium. Shortly after the statement was released, Whitecaps went top of the overall Major League Soccer standings via a 3-2 win away at Dallas.
The team is doing their job on the pitch, but off it, time is ticking, pressure is mounting, and vultures are circling. The search for someone to put The Caps on lock in Vancouver goes on.
