Winnipeg's Valour FC to suspend operations after 2025 season, team announces

Winnipeg's professional men's soccer club, Valour FC, is suspending operations after this year's season. 

The club, which played in the Canadian Premier League, announced the decision in a statement on Friday, thanking fans, players and staff. 

The club says it will fulfil contractual obligations toward players and staff until the end of the year. Players under contract past the 2025 season will become free agents or return to parent clubs, the statement said.

Fans holding credits in their ticket accounts will receive full refunds and the club will contact account holders with details and next steps, according to the statement.

"I had heard and, unfortunately, knew it was coming. I think it's really, really disappointing," said Rob Gale, Valour's first head coach and general manager, who was relieved of his duties in September 2021.

"Yeah, bitterly disappointed in the way it's gone since I left the organization."

The Winnipeg-based team was owned by the Winnipeg Football Club, which runs the CFL's Blue Bombers. The organization treated Valour as "a tax writeoff and an afterthought," according to Gale.

Bombers president and CEO Wade Miller declined an interview request from CBC.

Gale said he and other Valour coaches created initiatives designed to build the relationship between the team and the city, such as working with local players to develop the youth soccer system in Winnipeg.

"I think the first year we had 11 Manitobans, so there was a real connection to the community," he said, adding that seemed to work.

"We had a couple of games well over 10,000 fans in that first year. And I think we averaged the highest number of fans and had the least amount of debt in that first year."

But coming out of the COVID-19 years,