Joey Saputo says it’s time to pass the torch as CF Montréal’s owner.
But he won’t guarantee the club will remain in Montreal under new ownership.
Saputo announced Monday that he’s putting the Major League Soccer team up for sale. And although he would prefer to keep the club in Montreal, he left the door open to relocation — saying he won’t make staying in the city a condition of the sale.
“I would love for the club to stay here in Montreal, but if the club doesn’t find a local buyer and I get an offer and the club needs to be relocated, then I have no choice, and that’s the decision I will take,” Saputo said during a news conference at Stade Saputo.
CF Montreal owner Joey Saputo announces his intention to put the Major League Soccer club up for sale during a press conference in Montreal, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi
“I will not discount the club to the point of just giving it away, just for the sake of giving it away.”
The announcement comes after the worst season in the club’s MLS history. Montreal finished last in the Eastern Conference with six wins, 20 losses and eight draws.
The team also lost the Canadian Championship final to lower-tier Forge FC of the Canadian Premier League, and frustrated fans boycotted games late in the season as struggles continued on the field.
But Saputo said the decision to sell was not driven by urgency or the team’s poor results. Following emotional opening remarks, he repeated often that he had taken the team as far as he could.
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“It’s not the past season that we had, or wasn’t one particular event,” he said in his first Montreal media appearance since 2022. “When you’ve been in this the amount of time that I’ve been, there comes a certain point when you say, you know what, I’ve done everything that I could possibly do and it’s time to pass the torch.”
Saputo founded the franchise in 1992 as the Montreal Impact and helped bring the club into MLS in 2012.
There have been highlights — including a run to the 2015 CONCACAF Champions League final, a semifinal appearance in the 2016 MLS playoffs and a 2022 season of broken franchise records — but Saputo’s tenure has also been marked by instability and a lack of on-field success in most of the past decade.
Since joining North America’s top flight, Montreal has gone through close to a dozen head coaches and consistently ranked among the league’s lowest-spending teams.
Saputo, however, said the club’s financial situation had little to do with his decision to sell.
“One thing I want to make clear is that the financial status of the family or the club as such was never in question. I wasn’t looking for partners because I didn’t need partners,” he said. “This decision wasn’t a decision that was based on the financial aspect of it.”
The 62-year-old billionaire also owns Stade Saputo, the team’s home stadium, and Bologna FC in Italy’s Serie A.
Montreal, valued at US$440 million by Forbes in February, is the second Canadian MLS team on the market after the Vancouver Whitecaps initiated a sale process in December 2024.
The club faces a stadium challenge as MLS transitions to a summer-to-spring calendar in 2028, after the 2027 sprint season. Stade Saputo is not winterized, and while the under-renovation Olympic Stadium could eventually be an option, the venue is still years away from being ready to host events.
Until a sale is completed, Saputo said his family — sons Luca and Simone hold senior roles in CF Montréal’s soccer operations — would continue working with the Olympic Park to secure a lease agreement that would bring the club “in line with some of the other teams.”
“And maybe at that particular point in time, we can start spending in line with some of the other teams,” he added.
Saputo also said the family would remain involved in attempting to bring a national soccer training centre to Montreal, which could potentially serve as a new home for the club.
That is, of course, if the team remains in the city.
“I love this club, I would love this club to stay here,” Saputo said. “But if an owner comes in that doesn’t have the capacity to keep the club at the level that it needs to be at, and to spend the money that needs to be spent in order to bring in the players this city wants to see, then at that point, I’m not doing anyone a favour by selling it to someone just to keep it here.”
“If someone has the capacity to do it … then I would love for this club to be here and stay here and continue to build on what we did,” he added. “But if there isn’t, and there’s an offer that comes in to relocate the club, and it’s in line with Major League Soccer and what they wanted, too, then yeah. That’s where it’s gonna be.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2026.
© 2026 The Canadian Press