REPORT: MURDOCH TO TEAM WITH SLIM TO TAKE OVER FORMULA ONE

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp may team up with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to make a joint bid for Formula One Auto Racing, Britain’s Sky News, a News Corp unit, reported today (Wednesday). If successful, Britain’s Guardian newspaper observed, the acquisition would represent the first time that a single media group has taken over an entire sport. Such a takeover would come as a blow to the BBC, which currently has rights in the UK to broadcast Formula One on TV, radio, and the BBC Sport website through 2014. However, it pays about $65 million a year for those rights — an expenditure that has raised the eyebrows of some critics who contend that the publicly funded broadcaster has no business doling out such extravagant sums for such programming.