Murdoch warns EPL about club TV rights 'disaster'

International media magnate and sports broadcaster Rupert Murdoch has warned the English Premier League not to return television rights to individual clubs. When the EPL was formed in 1992, it received a mandate from its 20 clubs to market fixtures, the league's lion logo and broadcasting rights on behalf of all clubs and has since emerged as the richest soccer competition in the world. "It could be a disaster, I believe, if they broke up the Premier League, and freed everyone to sell their own rights," Murdoch said in a Sky One documentary that will be broadcast next week. "We'd end up having to pay a lot of money for, say, the six best teams, and the other teams would have no money." Murdoch's BSkyB has held the live rights to the league since the inaugural 1992-1993 season, and paid a record 1.31 billion pounds last year to show two-thirds of televised matches from 2007 to 2010.