Could the new owners sell off individual teams?

[Tank55]

MLS went through periods where Lamar Hunt owned multiple teams (or I guess technically, owned the operating license to multiple teams). I agree it's probably not the best idea over the long term, but if the league decides to move in that direction, it might not be the type of thing that can happen all at once.

[johnnyangryfuzzball]

Not sure I would want to purchase a team in a league where the league still owned its own teams.

If all the team are sold, then yes, everyone has an equal stake with equal voting power. But the league would really have a conflict of interest becauset of its own investments vs outside investors. I can see where dealings could really have a question mark over them, whether handling of players or even game outcomes. It'd have to be all league-owned or all separate or else the legal drama will begin.

That was one of the glaring issues with the UFL: they had an ownership structure where Bill Hambrecht still legally controlled everything, and he still held onto Las Vegas throughout the league's existence. (Did Hambrecht steer the best players to his Locomotives? Probably not, but under scrutiny, having the founder-owned team also be its most successful would generally be something suspicious.) They tried to get investors, but many of them walked (including most glaringly Jim Speros, who owned the Baltimore CFL squad, took one look at the UFL business model and cringed). And, of course, there was the case of the Cleveland Spiders baseball team back in 1899.

The only league that's been able to make that kind of model work is MLS, and even that is mainly through continuous expansion revenue—and the explicit backing of the U.S. Soccer Federation, which helped quash the NASL's effort to rise to par with MLS.

If Johnson/Garcia/Cardinale were to adopt the MLS model, they'd have to sell all eight teams in one offseason; if they went with the traditional franchise model, it'd have to only be seven, so long as they moved the league to a non-profit association the same way the NFL does; that way they could hold on to one franchise for themselves. (Of course, contraction would allow for fewer teams to be sold and thus quicken the process, but of course that means less money coming in.)

Sorry for rambling.