Through the Sherman and Clayton Acts, the plaintiffs claimed that MLS and its investors acting as a single entity unlawfully lessens the value of players' services and that MLS and the USSF conspired to monopolize the Division 1 professional soccer market.
Major League Soccer - through precedence set in Copperweld v. Independence Tube - argued that as a single entity with its investors, it could not conspire with itself because it functioned as a single business enterprise [REF].