What the DeVos/Van Andel ownership of the soccer team means for Grand Rapids

Earlier today, it was announced that the Amway families of Van Andel and DeVos will be the owners of the new soccer team that will play in the soon to be constructed soccer stadium.

MLive reported that the Van Andel and DeVos families will own the MLS NEXT Pro soccer team. The brief article features comments from Dan DeVos and David Van Andel, with some content that is recycled from previous posts. 

The Crain’s Grand Rapids article was much more substantial, although it also had quotes from the billionaire Amway families. The content that was included in the Crain’s article provided more detail on the ownership structure, stating:

David Van Andel and his family will hold primary ownership of the club, with roles planned for his four sons: Jesse, Aaron, Kyle, and Christian Van Andel. Dan DeVos and his family will hold a minority stake, with his son, Cole DeVos, playing a key leadership role.

What is significantly different about the Crain’s piece and the MLive article was that Crain’s provided some context on the amount of sports teams the Amway families own. 

The new soccer team will join the Grand Rapids Rise women’s volleyball team, which DeVos’ DP Fox Ventures launched in December 2022 and played its first season this year, as the region’s most recent professional sports team addition. 

DeVos also serves as chairman of RDV Sports, which owns the NBA’s Orlando Magic, the NBA G League’s Lakeland Magic and the Orlando Solar Bears minor league hockey team. 

DP Fox will assist with the process of forming the team, but the club will eventually need its own group to manage its operations in the future, according to the founders. 

The rest of the coverage is fairly standard, with GR Mayor Bliss expressing their excitement about the new soccer team, along with more quotes from the Amway billionaire families.

What this means for Grand Rapids

First, as GRIID has been stating all along, especially when it was announced that Dan DeVos had purchased the Big Boy restaurant property in 2022, we all should have known that that the Amway families would own the soccer team.

Second, it means that when the billionaire families of DeVos and Van Andel want something done in Grand Rapids, they pretty much get to do whatever they want. Grand Action 2.0 was founded by the DeVos and Van Andel families, with the specific goal of getting the City, County and State governments to spend over a billion dollars of public money to build the Van Andel Arena, the Convention Center, the Downtown Market, the Amphitheater and now the Soccer Stadium. This also includes the apartment complexes that will be adjacent to the Amphitheater and the Soccer stadium with hundreds of millions in public funding and the new “3 towers project” on Fulton and Market, with at least $565 million in tax incentives.

Third, of course the ultimate goal of the DeVos and Van Andel families is to expand their wealth. By owning another sports team, they will get to hold the City and County hostage in the future, when the time comes to expand the soccer stadium or use more land for parking, etc. The DeVos family owns most of the hotels in downtown GR, so when people come to watch a game and don’t want to drive home, or because they are from out of town, the chances are high that they will stay in a DeVos-owned hotel. 

Fourth, In Dave Zirin’s book, Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love, he discusses how wealthy sports team owners are constantly manipulating municipal governments and city residents to get them to provide massive subsidies for the construction of sports venues, like arena’s and stadiums. Zirin mentions how the DeVos family squeezed taxpayers in Orlando, when they wanted a new arena for their Orlando Magic basketball team. Zirin writes: “And he’s (DeVos) is getting $1 billion in taxpayers’ money to build the arena. That sends a bad message. Indeed. At its core, the DeVos model could be characterized as theft of public funds that turns teams and arenas into slush funds for radical right politics.”

Fifth, with the Amphitheater and the Soccer Stadium construction projects will come a parking nightmare for those who live on the near westside of Grand Rapids. In addition, all of this construction between Fulton on the south and Bridge St. on the north, will likely result in an ongoing gentrification of the near westside. Low income and working class families will not be tolerated, since they have little to offer to the billionaire families and their network of other members of the Capitalist Class.

Sixth, all of this new development, which is primarily predicated on the expansion of wealth for the DeVos, Van Andel and other members of the Capitalist Class will also result in further justification of expanding the GRPD. People with deep pockets will always use cops to protect their wealth, which is what the GR Chamber was arguing with their push to get the city to deal with the “unhoused problem” in downtown GR in 2022. In addition, the GRPD also recognizes that more development where people are coming in large numbers to spend money will result in the “need” for more cops. GRIID reported on a WOODTV8 story where a GRPD Captain stated: “We want to expand our numbers in the next couple years quite a bit. So I would say in the next couple of years — without speaking for the city commission, they’d have to approve it — but we would like to be in that 330 or 340 range. There’s a lot going on downtown with the amphitheater coming in, the soccer stadium. There’s excitement with the river transformation. There is a lot of great restaurants and nightlife down here.”

A great deal more could be said about the announcement that the Van Andel and DeVos families will own the professional soccer team, but the six reasons I provided are plenty to chew upon for now. What the DeVos and Van Andel families are doing with owning sports teams is also comparable to the bread & circuses environment that was crafted during the Roman Empire. Distract the public with entertainment long enough and they will forget about how they are being constantly robbed by those who run this city. Just another example of West Michigan Nice!