the league, the owners backed down. Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a professional soccer league representing the sport's highest level in both the United States and Canada. MLS constitutes one of the major professional sports leagues of the United States and Canada. Unlike the other four major leagues of North American professional sport, MLS still retains a reserve clause in every player's contract. For Major League Soccer, this was initially to prevent clubs from competing with each other for player contracts, an aspect of single-entity designed to protect it from antitrust lawsuits. MLS is a single entity in which each team is owned and controlled by the league's investors. The investor-operators control their teams as owners control teams in other leagues, and are commonly (but inaccurately) referred to as the team's owners. In MLS's view of the global professional sports marketplace, internal bidding leads to increased costs. The league takes an additional step, imposing the reserve clause for players indefinitely, making player rights a commodity within the team structure for long after the player has left the league. See also Retain and transfer system, a similar system that restricted player movement in professional association football in England Bosman ruling, a European Court of Justice decision that ended a similar system in European association football References Sources Algeo, Matthew (2006), Last Team Standing. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. Lyons, Robert S. (2010). On Any Given Sunday, A Life of Bert Bell. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Ruck, Rob; with Paterson, Maggie Jones and Weber, Michael P. (2010) Rooney:a Sporting Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Willis, Chris (2010). The Man Who Built the National Football League:Joe F. Carr. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc. Baseball labor relations Sports law Contract clauses