Skip to main content
SI

How Fans Across MLS Hope to Save Muller’s Vancouver Whitecaps From Ultimate Heartbreak

The Vancouver Whitecaps are facing the possibility of relocation from the city they have called home since 1974.
Ben Steiner|
Vancouver Whitecaps fans took to the streets to launch the Save The Caps movement.
Vancouver Whitecaps fans took to the streets to launch the Save The Caps movement. | Vancouver Whitecaps, Elizabeth Ruiz Ruiz/Getty Images

VANCOUVER — With plumes of blue and white smoke and a simple yet commanding design, the message beaming through the streets of Vancouver from the Whitecaps supporters was clear.

The “Save The Caps” movement was officially alive.

One of three Canadian MLS clubs, the Whitecaps have been for sale since 2024. Despite sitting near the top of the Supporters’ Shield standings and reaching the Concacaf Champions Cup and MLS Cup finals in 2025, there is no certainty about their future in the city. Relocation rumors are swirling. 

The lease deal at BC Place expires at the end of the 2026 season, a slight extension of the previous agreement that ended in 2025, and the team takes home only a reported 12% of the matchday revenue, despite drawing over 20,000 fans for 19 straight matches.  

MLS commissioner Don Garber has called the situation “untenable,” and there is the potential of relocation to a U.S. market, with groups in Las Vegas and other cities ready to pounce on a what could be cheaper pathway to MLS than the formal expansion process and its exorbitant fees, last measured at San Diego FC’s 2023 entry fee of $500 million.

With that growing uncertainty, the Vancouver Southsiders, the club’s largest supporters group, officially launched a new movement to keep the team on the Canadian west coast.

“It’s important that we launch this, because with the best performance on the pitch, it kind of masked the issues that the club was having,” Southsiders president Ciáran Nicoll told Sports Illustrated, worried the team may go the way of the Vancouver Grizzlies—the city’s short-lived NBA franchise from 1995–2001, which moved to Memphis after business and sporting struggles.

 “I think that some people think it’s just all going to get resolved in the end, or maybe they don’t want to think about it.”

Save The Caps Inspired by Columbus Crew

Columbus Crew
Columbus Crew remained in Columbus after immense support from local groups and across MLS. | Kirk Irwin/Getty Images

Before the movement’s first game, a 3–1 Vancouver win over the Colorado Rapids, thousands of fans packed into downtown bars and then marched towards BC Place, carrying signs and banners and trailing colored smoke ahead of the venue’s final match before hosting seven World Cup games this summer. 

Over the 90 minutes, the sold-out crowd of over 27,000 held up Save The Caps signs, with other displays reading “Hands off our team” and “We will fight for our club, and we will win,” taking on the rumors with an intensified passion—with hopes that love, in some way, can help save the club.

It draws inspiration from the Save The Crew movement, a massive 2018 push across Columbus and MLS to keep the Columbus Crew in the market, despite then-owner Anthony Precourt’s push to move the team to Austin. Precourt eventually opened Austin FC, while the Crew remained in Ohio. 

While the Save The Crew movement leaned on Ohio’s “Art Modell Law,” and brought the issue to court, there is no doubt that the fan push in Columbus and from across MLS to maintain a legacy club mattered. 

“This is a really good opportunity to show whoever it might be that is going to be putting up money, that we really do love our club here,” Nicoll says, adding that the Southsiders have been in contact with the people who ran the Crew efforts, despite no similar legislation in British Columbia. “Culturally, this team is from 1974  and has been a huge part of this city over the last 50-odd years. You can’t just throw that away... if we don’t do anything about it, we’ll be kicking ourselves.”

Several other supporters groups across MLS have also already displayed the Save The Caps message, with banners seen at Cascadia rivals Seattle Sounders and in Columbus. That trend is only expected to grow. 

“It of course becomes emotional,” said Whitecaps manager Jesper Sørensen after the win. “It’s love from the fans to the team and to the players and to all of us, and it’s a strong message—it’s important.”

What’s Next for the Whitecaps?

Vancouver Whitecaps
The Vancouver Whitecaps’ future remains uncertain. | Elizabeth Ruiz Ruiz/Getty Images

Whitecaps CEO and sporting director Axel Schuster has said the club is exploring every option to remain in Vancouver, down to “Plan Z,” which would be relocation. 

Yet, more recently, he told The Guardian that “it might not be this year or next year—we might be done with the alphabet... What happens after the season, that’s actually something nobody really knows. But it doesn’t feel good.”

The German executive has previously cited a $40 million revenue shortfall for the club compared to the rest of MLS, despite sitting near the top in attendance. At its core, the lack of stadium operations hampers the team, preventing it from fully benefiting from matchday revenue and other events. 

And unlike their American counterparts, they cannot draw on lucrative private healthcare sponsorships, given Canada’s universal healthcare. At the same time, provincial laws limit their ability in the gambling space, leaving them with fewer commercial opportunities.

BC Place, which is operated by PavCo—a crown corporation with the provincial government—reportedly makes less than $3 per fan at each Whitecaps match. 

BC Place
The current situation at BC Place hampers the Vancouver Whitecaps. | Elizabeth Ruiz Ruiz/Getty Images

As one potential solution, the Whitecaps are lobbying to take control of the government venue to make revenue from events and matches, thinking they could make more, while the dream of a new team-owned, soccer-specific stadium at nearby Hastings Park remains at least a half-decade and a new owner away, at best. 

When Vancouver billionaire Greg Kerfoot, in a consortium that includes NBA legend Steve Nash, took the Whitecaps into MLS in 2011, the league was in a very different era. The harsh reality now is that MLS’s immense growth has left the Whitecaps’ model behind, even as the team thrives on the pitch.

Still, for Nicoll and the thousands alongside him, there’s hope of avoiding the most heartbreaking storyline in the wake of the city hosting its first men’s World Cup.

“The more support you can give, whether it’s banners for your own clubs, your local MLS clubs, we just want people to know what’s happening and to stand with us against relocation of the Whitecaps,” he added. “All my friends and family are here, and the whole kind of social structure revolves around Whitecaps games. The Whitecaps are a huge part of my life, and so many of ours.”

For now, the club are still winning. The stands are still full, and the city has embraced it. But the future isn’t tied to results and the Save The Caps fight is a far greater matter than anything on the pitch.

READ THE LATEST MLS NEWS, ANALYSIS AND INSIGHT FROM SI FC

Add us as a preferred source on Google
Published | Modified
Ben Steiner
BEN STEINER

Ben Steiner is an American-Canadian journalist who brings in-depth experience, having covered the North American national teams, MLS, CPL, NWSL, NSL and Liga MX for prominent outlets, including MLSsoccer.com, CBC Sports, and OneSoccer.

Share on XFollow BenSteiner00
Home/Soccer