There are way more questions than answers—like, way, way more.

But Thursday’s sign of seriousness by the City of Vancouver (and presumably, in time, the province and federal government) that footie (and football) need a new purpose-built stadium comes at a critical time for professional franchises intrinsic to our community’s identity.

Sure, there are bigger problems—affordability, health care, housing, public safety, public finances—but Vancouver’s largest teams face the same quiet but unavoidable truth: the city’s stadium economics and operational realities don’t line up with the ambitions and requirements of modern sports franchises.

The problems for the Whitecaps and BC Lions (and, for that matter, the Canucks) aren’t about how they’re playing (although we could vent about the hockey team), but about where they’re playing and under what conditions. It only takes a trip to Rogers Centre in Toronto, the stadium district in Seattle, the new Edmonton and the imminent Calgary NHL arenas, or the soccer-focused fields in Cincinnati or Nashville, not to mention many NFL ones, to see how the city is lagging.

It’s not entirely about wins and losses or coaches and depth charts that make the franchises viable. It’s about the structural, financial and political constraints that shape the environments in which they operate. Our soccer and football franchises operate as tenants in a building they do not control. Their deals are constraints that make the business of sport harder here than it should be.

The........

© Vancouver Is Awesome