Whitecaps FC CEO addresses complex issue of keeping team in Vancouver

Amid growing speculation that the team may be sold and moved to the U.S., the CEO of the Vancouver Whitecaps FC faced several questions Wednesday.

Axel Schuster invited media members to a roundtable in downtown Vancouver, apologizing for a lack of communication in recent weeks.

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Late last week, Major League Soccer (MLS) announced that an investor group, led by Las Vegas businessman Grant Gustavson, had submitted a formal bid to buy and relocate the team.

Schuster says his silence means “only that we’re all very hardworking, and that we invest every second into solutions.”

Recognizing how much it was doing to maintain the club, the current ownership group, he says, realized that no other group would want to do the job without significant change or help.

“So we were getting a little bit in a dead end.”

But Schuster says the club, fans, and the current ownership are all working towards the same goal of keeping the team in Vancouver.

“We are all in this together,” he said. “If it would be an easy problem to solve, we probably would have solved it.”

The current ownership group, Schuster assured the media, is not merely biding its time, waiting for a better deal.

“I think everyone is now aware that it’s not the case.”

Schuster says the club couldn’t possibly wait the many years it would take to develop a new stadium and is therefore effectively reliant on BC Place. But he says the Whitecaps FC are in constant conversation with BC Place’s stakeholders, thinking “creatively.”

B.C. Premier David Eby has said the province is also “at the table fighting hard” to keep the Whitecaps in Vancouver.

Following his meeting with MLS Commissioner Don Garber last week, Eby told reporters the province would not transfer control of the provincially owned venue to the Whitecaps to stabilize the club’s finances, and added that the team has shown no interest in that option.

The premier said he plans to meet with the MLS commissioner again.

Schuster says the problem is complicated by many factors, and there is no singular thing that could change to save the club.

“We need a significant improvement in all categories that gather revenue for us or that are costing us money right now,” he said.

“We are not expecting to solve every area, because every club has an area where it has disadvantages and has challenges, but we need to solve a few of them.”

The club, he says, is open to a variety of options he describes as A, B, C, through X, and Y — but a ‘Z’ solution has emerged.

“And we don’t want to look at ‘Z’. And everyone knows what that means.”

—With files from Kurt Black and The Canadian Press