Having a business plan so poorly thought out that you cannot make payroll, in week 2, is just poor management. Income consists of, more or less, two things. TV money and live gate. They had to have some idea what the live gate would be and they certainly knew what the TV money was. Apparently no body used the common business sense to say "well, we project $X coming in, and have to pay out $Y, and Y is more than X, so this venture is foolish, let's move on to the next idea."
It seems that, among the many things modern sports owners have forgotten is that it is aberrational how much athletes make. If you paid these players a THIRD of what they now do, how many have any other realistic option? They are making $84K/year. Now I'm sure some, perhaps many, actually finished school and actually majored in something that yields $80K/year at 25 to 30 years old And God bless them. The rest? If you are telling me that you cannot find enough guys to make up 10 teams, you are just wrong.