When MLS Commissioner Don Garber summoned team owners to a meeting in the winter of 2001, he brought a group of bankruptcy attorneys with him.
The league had lost $250 million since its first game six years earlier, had seen attendance fall nearly 20% and appeared to be days away from folding.
"It was grim," one league executive said.
So Garber offered a plan to save the league, one which, among other things, called on a handful of owners to bankroll multiple teams. Three of them agreed, with Phil Anschutz and the Kraft and Hunt families eventually combining to manage 11 franchises.