IF the Vancouver Whitecaps really do want to take on the challenge of running B.C. Place, the province is all ears.
So says Ravi Kahlon, minister of jobs and economic growth. Kahlon has been handling the B.C. Place file.
“At this point, we’ve heard from the Whitecaps that they want their own stadium and they wanted to consider going to the PNE,” he said.
“We’ve told them we would support them. Obviously we would like them to stay in B.C. Place, but we’d support them (going to the PNE). There has been no proposal from the Whitecaps on them taking over B.C. Place. We have opened our books to them so they understand the costs to operate the building.
They understand the debt servicing. We have millions of dollars we’ve spent to fix the stadium up.
“But they have not proposed that.”
Kahlon’s response comes a day after The Athletic reported that Major League Soccer has begun discussing relocation scenarios for the Whitecaps if they are unable to come up with a solution for their current situation.
The club’s ownership has been looking publicly for new ownership for more than a year and a half, and has also said that remaining at B.C. Place in its current arrangement is not viable. The team’s lease has been at very low cost since the Whitecaps joined MLS in 2011, with the stadium operator PavCo retaining the bulk of food and beverage and stadium sponsorship revenues.
The Whitecaps have retained the bulk of ticket sales revenues.
With operating costs in MLS surging in recent seasons, chiefly due to player and travel costs, the Whitecaps say they now lose millions of dollars each season and ownership can’t carry on.
Before this current season, the province and the team agreed on a new one-year lease for the team to play at B.C. Place, with the province agreeing to return all profits generated by Whitecaps games to the team in an effort to help reduce their operating deficit.
These profits include concession sales and parking.
Last year, the province said the Whitecaps generated just $1.5 million in profits; Whitecaps CEO Axel Schuster has suggested that the team has a target of increasing their own revenues by $40 million, which would put them roughly league average.
Beyond the initial shift of revenues agreed to earlier this year, Kahlon revealed Tuesday to Postmedia that the provincial government has since agree to shift advertising revenues as well, bringing the total that is being delivered to the team up to $3 million.
MLS commissioner Don Garber first intimated that he thought a solution to keep the team in the short term at B.C. Place would be for the team to take on a management contract for the stadium as a whole.
The idea has remained a persistent talking point inside the Whitecaps, and even among fans — Kahlon is a Whitecaps season ticket holder — but Kahlon insisted he has not had a formal proposal put to him.
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“If that’s what they’re looking for,” he said, “they need to put a proposal forward that comes with debt servicing. It can’t be us investing millions in a roof and fixing the stadium and them saying ‘OK we’ll take the profits.’”
“We need to see what their plan would look like, because we don’t want to be stuck holding the bag if they were sold,” he added.
There are examples from elsewhere in MLS of teams running publicly-owned stadium, like in Toronto where the owners of Toronto FC, MLSE, run BMO Field, or in Portland, where the Timbers run Providence Park, or in Seattle, where the Seattle Sounders and the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks run Lumen Field.
There’s also a good example in Germany, where Eintracht Frankfurt took over Deutsche Bank Park in 2020 and have turned it into a success story. Deutsche Bank Park is considered B.C. Place’s cousin as they have the same roof system.
All this said, Kahlon said the Whitecaps have been good to deal with. They have discussed how other stadiums are run, he acknowledged.
“Axel and his team have been very professional,” he said. “We’ve been working on that because we want to make sure that the numbers that they’re presenting are accurate. The team also says they’re losing money. We have no line of sight of their costs. They haven’t shared their structure, how much debt they’ve accumulated.
And so these are things we would want to know.”
“If they had a proposal that they felt, you know, would solve their issues, we’d love to see it. We haven’t seen that yet. They’ve raised issues, good issues, with parking, concessions and advertising. And we’ve been addressing them as we hear them.”
*Province content/ Patrick Johnston
