In reality there were several issues which scuppered the bid and resulted in Stephen Byers, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, announcing to the Stock Exchange on April 9 that he had blocked the proposed acquisition. Byers accepted the findings and recommendations of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) and the advice of the Director General of Fair Trading that the merger was expected to operate against the public interest and that it should be prohibited.

According to Byers, the Commission concluded that the move might have reduced competition for the broadcasting rights to English Premier League matches. This would have led to less choice for the Premier League itself and less scope for innovation in the broadcasting of football games. The MMC also concluded that the move would improve BSkyB's ability to secure rights to Premier League matches, would reduce competition in the market for sports premium television channels and would lead to reduced competition in the wider pay-TV market. These competition concerns were the main reasons for the Commission's conclusion that the proposed merger was not in the public interest.

What Byers was trying to say is that there is still a lot of money to be made in broadcasting football in the UK, and his office did not want BSkyB grabbing the lion's share in advance. The MMC rejected several of BSkyB's arguments concerning the ability of other broadcasters who did not own Premiership rights to create pay-for-view or cable sports channels. An ongoing legal action by the Office of Fair Trading against the Premier League could result in a ruling that prevented the league from selling block rights in future, which would make BSkyB's current £743m contract illegal. If that occurred, clubs could sell their own TV rights, much as in Major League Baseball, and the MMC felt that it would be impossible to separate BSkyB from Manchester United in the eventuality of broadcast rights talks.

All well and good, if slightly incomprehensible to the average supporter. Which brings us back to football, and the reason that supporters' associations were so adamantly anti-Murdoch. Aside from competition issues, the MMC identified two football-quality issues:

• The acquisition would reinforce the existing trend towards greater inequality of wealth between clubs, thus weakening the smaller ones;

• And it would give BSkyB additional influence over Premier League decisions relating to the organization of football, leading to some decisions which did not reflect the long-term interests of football.

The first issue is perhaps the most discussed element of modern football since the advent of the Premiership in 1992. The gap between the biggest clubs and the rest has widened – not in the least because players' salaries have increased dramatically over the past three years, in line with the growing influx of foreign stars into the English game.

The Sky ruling may in fact place a de facto salary cap on salaries over the next few years, for as clubs are beginning to learn, not even massive television receipts can keep pace with the growing wage demands. So in that respect the decision may have helped to prevent further stratification in the game. Despite the ruling, however, Manchester United, with its giant revenue base from merchandising and its (in)famous global following, can still afford to keep pace with anyone in the game, and will no doubt be the English standard bearer for years to come in European competition.

The second issue relates to the feelings of impotence which supporters associate in general with corporate control of football – not a new phenomenon, by any means, but one which looks set to escalate over time. In some cases, the supporters may almost be deceiving themselves, in that they want to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand, corporations are the devil because they destroy the grassroots link between the supporters and their team, but at the same time the fans are happy to cast this link to the wind and demand big money purchases of foreign mercenaries in order to claim success. The question being asked more often these days is, "Is there really any difference between a Manchester United operated by a multinational corporation and one made up of 11 foreign players?"

Nevertheless, the reaction from the supporters' pressure groups was one of genuine delight. Andy Walsh, head of the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association, commented, "We're ecstatic, and extremely grateful to the thousands of people who've used the web to register their support for our campaign." Added Walsh, "I'll be out on the lash celebrating."