It's a Rupert world, we just live in it.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: Sports Biz

IN 1988, WHEN 26-YEAR-OLD Charlie Monfort was running his family's beef-export business, the Australia-born businessman Rupert Murdoch was three years into his new life as a U.S. citizen, a legal disposition he needed in order to buy up the handful of UHF TV stations that would become the foundation of the Fox Broadcasting Network.

No biography of Murdoch provides mention of whether the powerful media overlord made it a point of celebrating his new citizenship by visiting such quintessential American working towns as Greeley, where Monfort had grown up surrounded by flatland, cattle and a legacy of wealth created by the beef business founded by his grandfather, Warren.

But it seems a fair guess that the jetsetting Murdoch and the town of Greeley have never shared a close bond.

Even so, an unlikely partnership has emerged between Murdoch, his News Corp. media empire, and Greeley's own Charlie Monfort, the majority owner of the Colorado Rockies. In July, when the cable TV sports unit of Murdoch's Fox subsidiary renewed rights to televise Rockies games through 2014, it added two signature Murdoch touches: Fox Sports Net got a chunk of the team for a song, and it put a big crimp in a rival network's dreams.

The reported terms of the deal included a $20 million payment from Fox Sports for a 14-percent limited partnership stake in the Rockies. The cash provides a welcome infusion of money that frees the incumbent Rockies owners from having to write checks to cover capital needs for a second consecutive year. But it also represents a sweetheart valuation.

A $20 million payment for 14 percent of the team's equity suggests a total value of just $142 million for the Rockies--less than half of what sports industry investment experts such as Lehman Bros.' Sal Galatioto generally estimate the team to be worth. (Forbes, which publishes annual estimates of Major League Baseball team values, pegs the Rockies' total worth at just under $300 million in 2004).

Not just anybody could waltz in and offer 50 cents on the dollar for a share of the team, of course. Murdoch and crew also agreed to pony up $200 million over the next 10 years for the rights to televise up to 150 Rockies games each season on Fox Sports Net Rocky Mountain, the regional sports channel that is embroiled in a mano-a-mano battle with a rival network, Altitude, slated to be launched this month by Kroenke Sports Enterprises.

That's where the Rockies renewal gets really interesting. By locking...