Don Garber had just completed his first full season as Major League Soccer’s commissioner in late 2000 when he and the league’s owners gathered for a meeting at the Colorado ranch of the billionaire Philip Anschutz.

At the time, Anschutz owned three of the 12 teams in M.L.S., making his the single most important voice in American professional soccer. As he and league officials talked, Anschutz was among those wondering if it might be time to shut down the five-year-old league.

“To be frank, we were trying to figure out how to survive,” said Clark Hunt, whose father, Lamar, was one of the league’s founding members. A few people present said they left the meetings thinking the end was near. But soon after the gathering broke up, Anschutz told Garber that he was in for one more year.

“I think Phil thought the cost of operating the teams for one more year was worth less than the opportunity of selling the teams,” Garber said. “And he was right, because he sold all those teams for a profit.”