Rupert Murdoch's £625 million sterling bid for Manchester United has inevitably prompted comparisons with Italian media magnate and current centre-right opposition leader, Silvio Berlusconi. Has the Australian tycoon taken a leaf out of the Italian's book in his apparent attempt to pull off an "in-house" TV-soccer marriage of dazzling proportions?
The comparison is not quite so straightforward. When Silvio Berlusconi paid £11 million for prestigious Italian club, AC Milan, in January 1986, he made the move more with an eye to positive PR than to a money-making TV-soccer deal. One presumes that, in contrast, Mr Murdoch and his advisers see the huge outlay on Manchester United as commercial good sense.
The differences between the Berlusconi and Murdoch club purchases are all too obvious. For a start, when Mr Berlusconi purchased AC Milan 12 years ago, pay TV and international satellite TV were in their cyber-infancy. Secondly, leading Italian clubs such as AC Milan were not at that time empowered to broker their own TV rights deals with whomsoever they fancied.
The reality of Mr Berlusconi's first six seasons of ownership of AC Milan was that the club not only ran at a consistent, heavy loss but also his ownership earned him no significant TV rights deals between the club and his then Finninvest (now Mediaset) TV empire.
In those early years if Mr Berlusconi wanted to see AC Milan play either in European competition or in Italy's Serie A championship, then he was obliged to watch his club perform on state broadcaster, RAI - then and now his company's major rival on the Italian airwaves.
Throughout his ownership of AC Milan, the club has continued to lose money. Between 1986 and 1990, annual losses ranged from £6 million to £15 million, while in the 1995-1996 and 1996-1997 seasons, Milan returned losses of £17.8 million and £10.9 million respectively.
With no TV rights (apart from relatively unimportant friendlies) and with continuing annual losses, what was in it at AC Milan for Mr Berlusconi? The answer is almost everything. The purchase of AC Milan and the club's subsequent success (five Italian league titles and three European Champions Cups between 1987 and 1996) proved an important element in the rise and rise of Mr Berlusconi, an ascent that reached its apex when his newly created Forza Italia party won the 1994 general election. In a country where soccer is part of the national fabric, Mr Berlusconi's high profile, prime-time association with the country's (then) most successful club represented a type of feel-good publicity that simply had no price. AC Milan was a splendid "loss leader" not just for the Fininvest empire but also for Mr Berlusconi's long haul on the road to becoming Prime Minister.
AC Milan was good for Mr Berlusconi but he was also good for the club. He prompted a radical restructuring and refinancing of the club. He travelled to Amsterdam one spring evening in 1987 to sit up all night to persuade two relatively unknown Dutchmen called Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten to sign for his club.
He spent lavishly and laid the basis for a decade in which AC Milan was arguably the best club in world soccer. If Mr Murdoch does the same for Manchester United, then Old Trafford fans will have no complaints.
Analysis of Mr Berlusconi and Mr Murdoch is not limited to mere comparison. Last week, representatives of Mediaset met with Mr Murdoch in Milan in talks about a possible joint venture between the Murdoch controlled BSkyB and Mediaset, perhaps involving a stake purchase in the Kirch Group, Germany's second largest media company. Such a joint venture could yet represent one in the eye for RAI, since the state broadcaster has been trying to bring BSkyB into a pay TV development also involving Telecom Italia. Last week, AC Milan (and three other Italian clubs, Juventus, Inter Milan and Napoli) all signed a six-year, exclusive rights deal allegedly worth £404 million with Telepiu, the Italian unit of Europe's largest pay TV company, Canal Plus SA and the direct rival for the proposed Telecom Italia-RAI Pay TV.
The deal is doubly significant - not only does Mr Berlusconi have a 10 per cent holding in Telepiu, but it also represents the first time an Italian club has bargained directly with a broadcaster, going outside the collective umbrella agreement previously negotiated by the Italian Football Federation. Mr Berlusconi and Mr Murdoch may well soon be doing serious business together.
