Tonight in Britain, the Australian idea of a sports broadcasting anti-siphoning list will be firmed up into a reality for Rupert Murdoch and his partly-owned BSkyB satellite pay TV group.

It will be yet another slap at Murdoch and Sky and comes after regulators told it to sell off most of its 17.4% in the terrestrial broadcaster, ITV, and also told Sky it should be offering its premium channels to rivals at less than wholesale rights.

Murdoch and his UK minions are fighting the ITV and premium channel rulings in the court and politically (and have turned to backing the Opposition conservatives ahead of the national elections due in the first half of 2010).

But it is the sports anti-siphoning idea that poses the biggest strategic problem for Murdoch in the UK, and in Australia where the Rudd government is reviewing our list.

Foxtel, 25% owned by news (and with management control) and News’ 50% owned pay-TV money maker, Premier Media (Fox Sports), have been lobbying madly for the anti-siphoning list to be changed to allow pay-TV more of a chance to show some of the better supported sports on its channels exclusively.

Foxtel and News (and Rupert Murdoch, and son James, who is chairman of News Europe), won’t get any joy from the reports in London papers this morning that the UK Labour government tonight will reveal significant changes to its version of the anti-siphoning list.

The biggest chance will see Test cricket moved to the list, which will see it taken from Sky and put back into the free-to-air arena. Just when and how this will be done (along with other sports) isn’t clear.

The Olympics, home Tests for the England rugby union team, England’s qualifiers for soccer’s Euro and World Cups, the British open golf title and Wimbledon, will all be placed on the UK version of the sports anti-siphoning list.

The list actually supports the idea that Foxtel in Australia has a good deal and its current campaign is a load of rubbish. For example, Foxtel will share broadcasts next year of the Winter Games with Nine and the Commonwealth Games with Ten. It won’t have soccer’s World Cup, but it has had exclusive rights to Australia’s qualifiers, plus the Asian Cup games. It is showing the IPL 20/20 cricket, domestic four-day, one-day and 20/20 cricket exclusively, and shares AFL, NRL and Rugby Union broadcasts (and shows the Super 14 rugby games exclusively). Foxtel will also share to 2012 London Olympics with Nine.

In the UK, the English Cricket Board has already moaned that it will lose 120 million pounds from the deal, but you have to wonder about the cupidity of sporting organisations.

The peak audience for the final day of the Oval Test in this latest series, won by England, averaged about two million viewers on sky, the same day of the same Test in the more historic 2005 series saw seven million people watching on Channel 4, the free-to-air channel.

What the England cricket authorities did in grasping the Murdoch millions, was to abandon TV viewers completely. It was an example where the administrators put money ahead of supporters. Advertisers did not like it because they were unable to reach as many people as they would have on Four (which is a commercial government-owned channel, like SBS here in Australia).

One possible out might be if the Lord Test in each series was pit on the list (called the “Crown Jewels” of UK sport by many commentators), and the rest were either allowed on Sky. Sky might not be that upset, according to reports.

Other reports suggest that the sporting bodies will lobby, moan and delay the changes until the new government is sworn in next year. That is widely expected expected to be the Conservatives, supported by Murdoch’s media outlets.

The UK government believes that by making this move well ahead of the digital switchover in 2012, it is helping the sports position themselves for far greater access and revenue-raising capabilities. Many UK sports groups  such as those in Australia, have been lazy, slow or just ignorant of the possibilities of digital TV and have sold the rights cheaply for long periods of time.

There is also a fear that sports broadcasting currently in the UK is now controlled by a duopoly: Sky and its hated rival (well, in terms of paid content internet newsites) the BBC. Apart from soccer, ITV has no interest in broadcasting sport at the moment; its finances are too weak, as are those of Channel Four and the privately-owned Five. ESPN took over the failed Setanta Sport Pay TV channel, but is a tiddler compared to Sky and the Beeb.

So even though the likes of the ECB will moan and groan, what the government is doing is setting up a future where there will be more options for sports broadcasting, and more options for sports bodies to get good rights deals, instead of having to deal with a powerful duopoly. But don’t tell the thickheads at the greedy ECB that.

With the UK heading this way and with Rupert Murdoch’s gratuitous criticisms of Kevin Rudd and his government, what’s the betting on Foxtel getting the changes it desires? Foxtel needs it because its audiences have started a worrying decline, at a time when spending is rising. It already gets a better deal here than what Sky in the UK is facing. Time to turn down the moaning?