Organization Ownership Major League Soccer operates under a single-entity structure in which teams and player contracts are centrally owned by the league. Each team has an investor-operator that is a shareholder in the league. In order to control costs, MLS shares revenues and holds players contracts instead of players contracting with individual teams. In Fraser v. Major League Soccer, a lawsuit filed in 1996 and decided in 2002, the league won a legal battle with its players in which the court ruled that MLS was a single entity that can lawfully centrally contract for player services. The court also ruled that even absent their collective bargaining agreement, players could opt to play in other leagues if they were unsatisfied. Having multiple clubs operated by a single investor was a necessity in the league's first ten years. At one time, Phil Anschutz's AEG operated six MLS franchises and Lamar Hunt's Hunt Sports operated three franchises. In order to attract additional investors, in 2002 the league announced changes to the operating agreement between the league and its teams to improve team revenues and increase the incentives to be an individual club operator. These changes included granting operators the rights to a certain number of players they develop through their club's academy system each year, sharing the profits of Soccer United Marketing, and being able to sell individual club jersey sponsorships. As MLS appeared to be on the brink of overall profitability in 2006 and developed significant expansion plans, MLS announced that it wanted each club to have a distinct operator. The league has attracted new investors that have injected more money into the league. Examples include Red Bull's purchase of the MetroStars from AEG in 2006 for over $100 million. For the 2014 season, the league assumed control of the former Chivas USA club, which had suffered from mismanagement and poor financial results under its individual operator relationship. The league eventually dissolved the team, in favor of awarding rights to a second soccer club in the Los Angeles area to a new investor group on October 30, 2014. The league now has 29 investor-operators for its 29 current clubs, with no member of any club's investor group having a stake in that of any other club. Since December 2015, when AEG sold its remaining 50% interest in the Houston Dynamo, the former multiple-team operators AEG and Hunt Sports, with the LA Galaxy