The real estate thing is The MLS. The American soccer league is just MLS, with no article. Just a quick way to distinguish them.
tomjakubowski•22m ago
Funny thing about this digression is that MLS is quite centralized, to an extent unparalleled in American major sports. Teams are all owned by MLS; "team owners" own shares of MLS with a license to operate their team; players sign contracts with MLS, not the team they play for. Revenue is shared and teams are allocated money to spend from that shared revenue by byzantine rules (look up "GAM" or "allocation money" in relation to MLS for more info).
Save you all a click: this is about message layer security eg for instant messages, not MLS the American soccer league nor MLS the real estate listing service much loved by American real estate agents.
throawayonthe•1h ago
tbh that's the only MLS i've heard of
on second thought there was also the Mozilla Location Service
xeromal•2h ago
dboreham•1h ago
tomjakubowski•28m ago
tomjakubowski•22m ago
This ownership structure was subject to a significant antitrust case in Federal court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_v._Major_League_Soccer