at the business end: how Rupert Murdoch became the most powerful man in sports

Rupert Murdoch started the twenty-first century as the most powerful person in sports. There were other contenders, such as Michael Eisner, the head of Disney, and John Malone, the chief of Tele-Communications. But no one came close to Murdoch; his worldwide influence in almost every facet of sports was undoubted. And yet, he had no particular passion for sports. A glance at his career reveals that he only took an active interest in them in the 1990s, when he realized that he could use sports, as he put it, as a “battering ram” to smash down people’s doors and install his television services. For Murdoch, sport was strictly a means to an end; a very effective means, we should note.