How achingly poignant it was this week to see the shiny-eyed bravehearts talk about how they were not going to let Rupert Murdoch take Manchester United away. Football fans dream big. Part of the fantasy is the illusion of influence. Fans matter. Fans are the lifeblood of the game. Fans are the ones who have the say.

In the old flatcap days, when working men stood on grey terraces like sodden herons grimly identifying with their heroes who were one step or one injury removed from their own lot, well, back then, fans mattered. The bob paid at the stile might end up in the centre forward's pocket. That was then. Rupert Murdoch's annexation of Manchester United merely confirmed that the fan is dead and we are into the era of the consumer.

If there is surprise at that development it is only because the football aficionados' world is a small and narrow one. Murdoch watchers expected it. Mr Leonard Ryan, of Setanta Sport, the Irish sports rights company, says the Manchester United purchase was in keeping with Murdoch's predatory habits.

"It was inevitable. Where he has rights, he has bought properties. The local environment was right too. The Premier League as an institution is being investigated whereby its insistence on negotiating collectively is being questioned.

"Murdoch could find himself soon not just dealing with the Premier League but dealing with 20 different groupings, all looking to sell their home games. He has his foot in the door with the biggest property and he has bought influence. It's what he did in America."

In the US, the sporting landscape has changed at an extraordinary pace and Mr Murdoch has been the machine driving much of that change.

In January, Mr Murdoch paid $4.5 billion for exclusive rights to the NFL football for the next five years. In the space of a week around superbowl time, the NFL pulled down $18 billion in various rights deals (or twice as much as analysts reckon it would have cost to buy every team in the league).

Fox television, part of the Murdoch empire, contributed to that orgy with a 39 per cent increase on what it had cost them to enter the NFL five years previously. And if a short-term loss was inevitable, the payback came in terms of the station affiliates which switched from CBS to Fox as soon as gridiron football switched.

Mr Murdoch had literally built his TV company off the back of sport and was prepared to pay more to secure the prospect of consolidation. He wants to be the market leader as television moves into a new era.

Not long afterwards, other strands of Mr Murdoch's vertical integration strategy became apparent. For $311 million, he bought the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team - a sporting institution at least as venerated and loved as Manchester United. Through his involvement in the 20,000-seater Staples Centre in downtown LA, he has acquired joint ownership of the LA Lakers (basketball) and LA King (ice Hockey), who will play in the arena from next season.

Elsewhere, he has also been busy. Last year, News Corp - Murdoch's global umbrella media company - purchased nine regional sports channels and a portion of Madison Square Garden and its resident franchises, the New York Knicks (basketball) and the New York Rangers (ice hockey), when it purchased 40 per cent of Cablevision Systems Ltd, the fully-integrated media model which Mr Murdoch had long admired and sought to emulate in LA.

The acquisition of nine regional sports channels gave Fox a network of 18 regional channels under its direct control, as well as a series of affiliates. Fox now holds regional TV rights for 17 NBA teams, 12 ice hockey teams, 22 baseball teams and 20 college leagues. It hits just under 60 million US homes with its sports networks. In many ways, Mr Murdoch owns sport in the US.

As television moves from a selling model, based on one to many, towards the more lucrative digital era of one to one, Mr Murdoch is well placed.

It is the acquisition of the fabled Dodgers which best points to the direction in which Mr Murdoch's thoughts ran when he considered buying Old Trafford lock, stock and Schmeichel.

The market is moving quickly from the era of free TV, through pay TV and on towards the El Dorado of pay per view TV. Owning the leading brands and owning the medium, gives you no risk control.

For instance, Media Partners, the loose conglomerate flying the kite for the European super league, has conspicuously (and dangerously) not included Mr Murdoch in its plans.

By purchasing Manchester United, Mr Murdoch has placed a no-lose bet on the future of football. No Euro league is credible without Manchester United and that gives Mr Murdoch massive leverage with which to muscle in on the deal or to cobble one together himself. A European league would be a typical Murdoch venture - all big events, all the time.

Until then, he has the rights and ownership of the most lucrative club in football. It was estimated that when United launched its own TV channel this week (MUtv) that four million people in the UK consider themselves to be United fans.

Is all this it good for the sport? Locally yes, (maybe). Globally no. Mr Murdoch's purchase of the biggest soccer club in Britain certainly diminishes the chances of their being any equitable form of revenue-sharing in the Premiership come the new century. That brings the danger of a two-tier system which makes the domestic league uncompetitive. Media-driven clubs have the purchasing power to drive up transfer fees and wages, squeezing the small market clubs.

"Pay per view throughout the world has only worked in a big way for huge boxing matches. When it comes to pay per view on a more regular basis, it is much more difficult," Mr Murdoch said after BSkyB's a.g.m. in London in November.

He is right and what is worrying is that Mr Murdoch is positioning himself to exert the influence to change that. Pay per view will not work as long as Manchester United is facing a menu which includes such teams as Charlton, Wimbledon and Southampton every year.

In a super league set-up, where every match is an event, Manchester United has unparalleled potential. There will be casualties, and perhaps they will be little mourned, but much of the soul and sense of connection will have drained from soccer.

Like US players' wages, viewing figures and sponsor spend will be up. But there is no trickle down - participation will be down and passion will be down. Obesity among children is the only significant increase reported in the shiny new era.

Asked in November when he thought that pay per view football matches might be introduced in the UK, Mr Murdoch said: "I suspect pay per view football is a little way off . . . It is up to the clubs but I suspect there will be tension between four or five very successful clubs and the others."

Smaller football clubs must hear the sounds of bells tolling.

"If Manchester United come on board, and Arsenal and Liverpool are bought, you will have four or five teams and nobody else at the races," says Mr Ryan, of Setanta. "Spain has gone like that already. That is the model which we could be heading towards."

Mr Murdoch's image as the big, bad guy with fingers in too many pies is bolstered by a series of headlining stories and the constant tales of the undue influence he retains over figures of political influence.

A list of those lucratively commissioned by his company, HarperCollins, to produce autobiography reads like a roll call of the political gatekeepers of modern technology.

The effects of Mr Murdoch's corporate synergy are more subtle. The implications for journalism are as depressing as they are for football. With four national newspapers and a TV news channel in the UK, Mr Murdoch controls much of the journalistic output on Manchester United.

The cross-fertilisation of his interests may not reveal itself in the business of match reports and football controversies but what will the response be in terms of reporting the PLC performance? What stance will be taken on a proposed European super league. Or, Heaven forbid, how will it play if Manchester United should be involved in a tragedy akin to Hillsboro or Heysel and issues of liability, which transcend sport, are at stake.

Precedent is not happy. It is only 23 years since Mr Murdoch, as proprietor of the Australian newspaper, forced his own journalists to walk out in ethical protest against the censorship and bias in favour of Mr Malcolm Fraser in a historic Australian election which saw the end of the Gough Whitlam era.

After the election, copies of Murdoch newspapers were burned in the streets but Mr Fraser obligingly changed Australian laws which allowed Mr Murdoch to maintain residency outside the country.

Mr Murdoch will use his media organs less flagrantly but in ways which still tarnish journalism. Part of last year's deal for the Aussie Rules rights, for instance, involved elevated coverage for the sport in Murdoch newspapers serving areas (New South Wales and Queensland) where the code is not strong.

More trivial again, perhaps, but indicative of his influence is the story of Fox TV and Mr Ted Turner.

In the US, where Fox covers baseball, it was noted during the play-offs last autumn that Fox's cameras would pan the crowds between plays, picking out famous faces. Despite the fact that Mr Murdoch's hated rival, Mr Ted Turner, owned the competing Atlanta Braves, Mr Turner's face was never picked out.

That was a little twist on the previous year's coverage. Then the Braves were in the World Series itself. Mr Turner and his wife, Jane Fonda, were only shown when their team made an error or their opponents, the New York Yankees, scored.

That's a by-product, however. The object of Mr Murdoch's vertical integration strategy is to own the ability to both create and distribute programming. The beneficiaries are athletes, players and owners. The losers are the fans who pay more for tickets and more for watching sport in the home.

Despite the constant protestations of Mr Murdoch and his minions that the empire is "good for choice", the long-term effect is likely to be negative. One industry analyst who didn't wish to be named feels the choices on offer will retract as Mr Murdoch's tentacles expand.

"The only reason BBC has the highlights is because Murdoch used BBC as a window for building Sky. They needed them at first. Now BBC are hanging in there while Sky builds its penetration. It's just political until such time as they have the penetration to take the political heat off. Then they'll pull that. They are very vigorously protective about anything they own."

Mr Irial Mac Murchu, of Nemeton, the Waterford-based company which produces TnaG's successful soccer programme, Ole Ole, discovered how vigorous Sky can be when he went renewing the rights for Scottish soccer.

"All the Premiership clubs have broken away from the league's new organisation and administration. They cut their own deal separately from the scottish league and sold the rights to Sky.

"Sky obtained the rights exclusively for Ireland, including all live matches, all highlights and all delayed broadcasts. Even though they are not an indigenous broadcaster, they have excluded us from showing the highlights of Scottish football . . . It wasn't acrimonious but it was an indication."

This week has seen the future and Homer Simpson and Roy Keane work for the same company. Once upon a time Manchester United was a community asset. Now it is merely an asset.