{"id":635060,"date":"2026-08-01T03:27:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T03:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/635060\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T03:27:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T03:27:22","slug":"ex-canucks-owner-arthur-griffiths-submits-bid-for-whitecaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/635060\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Canucks owner Arthur Griffiths submits bid for Whitecaps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty-five years after the Vancouver Grizzlies were relocated to Memphis, former Grizzlies and Canucks owner Arthur Griffiths has reportedly put in a bid to save the Vancouver Whitecaps. <\/p>\n

Canucks broadcaster Dan Murphy tweeted on Friday<\/a> that Griffiths is \u201cheading a group that has put in a formal offer to purchase the [Whitecaps].\u201d While no other details have emerged yet about who else may be involved or what that offer looks like, it\u2019s a promising sign for Whitecaps fans, who have been pleading for someone to save the club for months. <\/p>\n

The Griffiths family bought the Canucks in 1974, and it was passed down from father Frank to Arthur \u2014 who had worked for them since 1981 \u2014 when he died in 1994. In 1997 Arthur sold the team to what is now Canucks Sports & Entertainment. <\/p>\n

That included his stake in the NBA\u2019s Grizzlies, who tipped off their inaugural season in 1995 at what is now Rogers Arena \u2014 the stadium the family built a few hundred metres down the road from BC Place \u2014 before being relocated to Memphis in 2001 under the Canucks\u2019 ownership. To this day the address of Rogers Arena is 800 Griffiths Way.<\/p>\n

The Whitecaps are facing a similar fate, with Las Vegas reportedly interested<\/a> in taking the team should the MLS side be forced out of Vancouver. The current Whitecaps ownership group have had the team up for sale since late 2024, and have been adamant that they want the team to remain in British Columbia.<\/p>\n

The club has been looking for a stadium solution with their BC Place lease set to expire at the end of the season, and Whitecaps CEO and sporting director Axel Schuster \u2014 who has become the team\u2019s spokesperson \u2014 has repeatedly said<\/a> that nobody is interested in buying the team until a stadium solution is figured out.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t appear to be getting any closer with news this week that the stadium is not for sale amidst Whitecaps interest to purchase and take control of their home ground, but with times nearing desperation, there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel.<\/p>\n

Related Reading: British Columbia says BC Place is not for sale despite Vancouver Whitecaps interest<\/a><\/p>\n

Griffiths, who was inducted to the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame in 2016, was also chair of the Vancouver\/Whistler\u00a02010\u00a0Bid Society that won the right to host the transformative 2010 Winter Olympics in the city. He also helped create Canuck Place, a hospice in BC for local children.<\/p>\n

More recently he was CEO of Vancouver-based cannabis company World Farms Corp and has worked in business consultancy roles according to his public LinkedIn account. <\/p>\n

He spoke glowingly<\/a> about the opportunity that the World Cup could provide for Vancouver financially in the leadup to this summer\u2019s tournament, though he was not formally involved.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-five years after the Vancouver Grizzlies were relocated to Memphis, former Grizzlies and Canucks owner Arthur Griffiths has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5128],"tags":[35799,69372,19,894,5,8203,8154,40,4,893,27,25071,5313],"class_list":["post-635060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver-canucks","tag-arthur-griffiths","tag-bc-place","tag-canada","tag-canucks","tag-hockey","tag-major-league-soccer","tag-mls","tag-news","tag-nhl","tag-vancouver","tag-vancouver-canucks","tag-vancouver-whitecaps","tag-vancouvercanucks"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/117018128882561893","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}