Media companies buying up sports teams are nothing new in America: Disney owns the Angels, Ted Turner owns the Braves, Charles Dolan of Cable Vision owns the Rangers and the Nicks...but now it's happening in Britain. The last two weeks have seen bids by by a number of media enterprises to take over some of the country's top soccer clubs. The proposed sales are likely to make English football leagues more and more like their American equivalents, but fans fear it could destroy the game as they know it. On the Media's Nicholas Wood reports from London.

Sound effects of pub
"Could I have a pint, please...."

In the Arsenal Tavern in North London, conversation is dominated by the possible take over of the local soccer club, Arsenal. There's no doubt a takeover by a media company Carlton Communications would bring much needed money to the club. But it would increase the likelihood of a Dodgers-style move by the team from one side of London to the other. And, as they were in Brooklyn, fans are adamantly opposed.

Fan One: I am concerned that your average fan is going to be a loser in this situation. As I say I've experienced the situation in the States where they were moved from one area to another.... It's not good for the area, a lot of the businesses around here survive on the home games....

Fan Two: Well I don't agree with it, I don't want them to be taken over or have anything to do with Carlton for many reason. I think they need their independence and I think Carlton have an appalling image.

The rush to bid for top soccer clubs was sparked off by B Sky B, the satelite TV company, which is half owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It's offered over a billion dollars for Manchester United, the UK's most profitable soccer team. The company already owns the TV rights for the major soccer league in the UK, the Premier League. The suspicion is that a takeover of United and any others that might follow suit has less to do with media mogul's football fanaticism, than with owning the teams that negotiate the control of the TV rights that next come up for grabs in 2001. Justin Urquart Stewart, corporate analyst with British stockbrokers Barclays, says these companies want to have their cake and eat it..

Urqart Stewart: What these media and leisure businesses are paying for is not just a matter of the ownership of a club, it's the ability to actually swap sides of the table. Instead of being just a supplier of goods and services, albeit broadcasting and leisure activities, you can actually then become a part owner and therefore you've got a vote on the future of the structure of this part of the leisure industry and that's what they're buying into.

Many say the takeovers are well overdue, though. Mike Carlson is a regular commentator on American football living in the UK. He's watched the football scene change since the early 1980s and isn't surprised about interest in the clubs.

Mike Carlson: The NFL went on television in Britain in 1982 and if you had said in 1982 that British football teams would be playing in a premier league wearing squad numbers on the backs of their jerseys with their names on the backs of their jerseys, that the matches would be televised on subscription tv, that there'd be cameras down at pitch level, that people would talk about the game using telestrators as if it was a game with tactics rather than just a bunch of guys running around with a lot of bottle and good luck, people would have told you you were crazy.

British soccer teams are only now realizing the benefits of marketing themselves like their American cousins. Big clubs such as Manchester United now make more money from merchandising than they do from ticket sales. But many smaller clubs struggle to survive from week to week. Soccer analyst Professor Eric Dunning from the Centre for Football Studies in Leicester says the new takeover could make life even tougher for some teams.

Professor Dunning: I'm afraid the consequences are not going to be all that pleasant for some people. They'll be good for the Manchester Uniteds of this world. I also hope for the Leicester Cities of this world, it remains to be seen to medium clubs like this, but I think smaller clubs, especially in the second and third divisions as they are now, some of them will probably go out of business or cease trading as professional clubs. Others will revert to amateur status, others to part time.

Dunning says the four divisions and scores of teams playing in England today will undoubtedly shrink under commercial pressures and head towards an American-style football league with just two divisions. Mike Leigh, spokesman for the top division, the Premier League, admits that in a country of just under sixty million people there isn't enough room for all those teams.

Mike Liegh: With ninety two professional clubs, we have more professional teams than any other country in the world. I think and that is a very large number of clubs to maintain as full time professional clubs. Whether you can do that over a very long period of time, I think it's difficult to say, but it's something that brings a real flavour and a real uniqueness of British Football and I think what we don't want to see is that we're just one successful league.

Several fan clubs have started campaigns against the take-overs. They fear media companies can only be bad news for their teams. Mike Carlson can't see what all the fuss is about, though. He says British Sport is finally catching up with what's been happening in the US for decades.

Carlson: This is all inevitable. It's part of the business of the game. If it's well managed. There's no guarantee that media companies are any better at it, than anyone else, but if it's well managed it doesn't have to be to the detriment of the game itself.

But that's little comfort for the small teams who might well find themselves out of business very soon.

For On The Media, I'm Nick Wood in London.

On the Mediawith Brian Lehrer airs on Sunday at 4pm and 10pm on Radio New York, AM820. You can also hear On the Mediahere.

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