The Court of Appeals found that Major League Soccer was a single entity and therefore legally incapable of conspiring with itself.

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.

[2] The players filed their lawsuit in the fall of 1996, and the Court held summary judgment hearings in January 1998.

However, the decision also distinguished MLS from Copperweld and remained intentionally inconclusive as to whether the league's corporate structure really qualifies as a true single entity.

[1] On the charge of a reduction in competition under the Clayton Act, the Court of Appeals held that "the creation of MLS did not reduce competition in an existing market" because no active market for Division 1 soccer previously existed in the United States.