The BBC claimed a significant victory last night over satellite rivals Sky Sports when they fended off a massive bid by the Murdoch organisation to acquire the rights to the 1998 US Masters golf tournament.

As the BBC were celebrating retaining the Masters, one of the cornerstones of their beleaguered sports output, they learned that Sky had made a lavish presentation in London recently to members of Augusta National Golf Club, owners of the tournament.

John Rowlinson, the BBC head of sports development, commented: "In spite of what we understand to be a massive bid by Sky to relieve us of the Masters, we are delighted to say it will be available to everyone on terrestrial television next April."

Declining to put a price on the contract - other than to admit it was considerably more expensive than this year's - he added: "We realise it's becoming harder for the corporation to compete for big sports contracts, and we certainly couldn't have entertained Augusta National committee members the way Sky seem to have done. Licence holders would have rightly objected to that."

Sky's approach to woo the Americans was made, among others, by the channel's top golf commentators, Ewan Murray and former BBC man Bruce Critchley. Sky Sports already transmit two of the world's four major tournaments, the US Open and the US PGA championship.

The BBC renewed their contract for the British Open championship last year for another five years.

No one from Sky was available for comment last night.