Rupert Murdoch has already altered the face of sport in America. In January of this year he paid $4.5 billion for exclusive rights to NFC football for the next five years. Even in America, such a windfall would have been unthinkable before Murdoch's entry to the market.
What Murdoch has achieved in America is to transform Fox Television from a string of local stations and regional networks into a major force competing with the three traditional powers in American television, the CBS, NBC and ABC networks.
The injection of the Murdoch's money into the bloodstream of American football has changed the face of the game too. Franchises have been changing hands at an accelerated pace as the profitability of owning a club increases. The challenge for the league will come when Murdoch decides that he has built his network satisfactorily and wishes to pay a more competitive - i.e. lower - price for rights.
In baseball, he bought the fabled Los Angeles Dodgers club earlier this year; he now owns substantial broadcast and cable television rights to 23 of major league baseball's 30 teams.
Ice hockey had a lucky escape just months ago. Murdoch had bought the rights to the National Hockey League in 1993 as part of his tactical plan to build Fox. Having renewed those rights last year, Murdoch lost $20 million last season and pulled out of the contract prematurely. Fortunately, ABC television and the sports network ESPN (both owned by Disney) stepped in and paid $600 million for a new five-year deal. Murdoch's dominance of other major sports meant that Disney were willing to take a short-term loss on the deal just to stay in the game.
These media gladiators had previously clashed in Los Angeles. Disney bought the Anaheim Angels baseball team in 1997. They already owned a local ice hockey franchise, the unfortunately named Mighty Ducks. Wage bills (insert your duck jokes here) have been high, but the actual performance of both clubs has been poor.
Meanwhile, Murdoch has burrowed his way into all the remaining sports franchises in LA. He has a share in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, the LA Kings ice hockey team; he's planning to build a stadium and bring American football back to LA.
In New York, where Murdoch famously got a special dispensation from government regulations that should have stopped him from owning a TV station and the New York Post simultaneously, Murdoch has had another clash of the titans. The city's cable systems are owned by Time Warner, controlled by Murdoch's arch-rival Ted Turner - who wanted to protect his own CNN by keeping Murdoch's Fox News and other Fox stations off the cable there. But Murdoch lobbied hard with politicians, and now Time Warner cable customers can watch Fox, Fox Sports, Fox News, the Fox Family Channel etc. Murdoch, meanwhile, has tied up TV rights to the city's all-conquering Yankees baseball team.
Before long, New York may become like Los Angeles and England, where Murdoch occupies a dangerous position - on both sides of the table when television and sport sit down to negotiate.
