If you wanted to buy B.C. Place, what would it cost?

Дата публикации: 26-07-2026 01:14:52

The stadium may not be a cash cow, but it's been a perfectly fine public amenity and an exemplary host, and seems to be only getting better.

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For the record, B.C. Place’s assessed value in 2025 was $226 million: the land itself accounting for $62 million of that overall figure.

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Obviously, if you were able to build anything else there, it would be worth a lot more. But the stadium’s specific role is where its true value lies.

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That’s why setting a price for what B.C. Place might be worth to a sports team who wants to buy it is a little hard to gauge. Ravi Kahlon, B.C.’s jobs minister, revealed this week that if someone really wanted to purchase the 43-year-old stadium from the provincial government, the answer would not be an immediate no. You know that’s something that would interest the Whitecaps; we do know it interests B.C. Lions owner Amar Doman, as reported by TSN’s Farhan Lalji on Friday and confirmed by Postmedia.

Selling this stadium would be a case of returning value to taxpayers: would a buyer really be ready to recognize this? The government needs to show they’re not simply giving a handout to a private operator.

A quick run through the books of PavCo, the Crown corporation that runs B.C. Place, reveals the basic numbers on the stadium. The book value, for instance, is $346 million. Take away the $119 million in long-term debt and you end up at $227 million. But an actual sale price would surely have to reflect a number over and above the raw costs of the land and building and the debt that’s carried.

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On top of that, given the about $200 million in upgrades made to the stadium in recent years — on top of the $500 million spent 15 years ago on the new roof and more — you start seeing value-additions that the government would surely want to recoup: after all, this is now a world-class stadium which a private buyer would massively benefit from operating just in image alone. You could quickly start looking at a billion dollars if you add this up.

But here’s the thing: there’s also a big pile of debt which costs about $10 million per year. And the stadium has consistently run at a loss, needing government top-ups to break even (though the growth of big concerts like the Eras Tour has turned that story in a positive direction). It’s not like a team would be buying a stadium that’s printing money: it’s fair to question how much better a private operator would do compared to PavCo, though it’s also notable that there’s a big difference when you’re selling stadium sponsorships which cover every event at the stadium, not just home games for the soccer team. Selling a sponsorship to be the official beer of the Whitecaps and have that beer available at every event at the stadium, say, could have big returns.

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That’s just one example of how one of the teams owning the stadium might be able to scale up sponsorships: if sponsoring the Whitecaps and the Lions would also mean your product is widely and always available at the stadium, there’s clear value in that.

Further, the stadium has become a concert destination. The Eras tour proved that. Bruno Mars is playing five shows next fall. The Whitecaps switching to a winter season will open up summertime dates that haven’t always been there. In the past, the stadium only booked a handful of concerts a year. There are nine booked through the rest of the year, including five nights for Bruno Mars alone.

Can the stadium become a cash cow? It hasn’t been so far, but it’s been a perfectly fine public amenity and an exemplary host over the years, and seems to be only getting better.

So the question to buyers: with all that in mind, what’s your offer? How much are you willing to pay to move the government from ‘not an immediate no’ to a definite yes on the sale of B.C. Place?

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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