Murdoch and Slim in talks to buy Formula 1

It promises to be a battle to rival some of the great Formula 1 duels between the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Sebastien Vettel, as Rupert Murdoch and Carlos Slim prepare to lock horns with Bernie Ecclestone, and probably Max Mosley, over the future of the sport.

According to reports from the Murdoch-controlled Sky News, the News Corp owner wants to buy the F1 racing circus and is in talks with Mexican mobile-phone baron Slim, the world's richest man, over a bid for the sport.

Sky claimed "at least one of F1's big car manufacturers" was also involved in the discussions and that JP Morgan, a former shareholder in F1, was advising Murdoch over the bid.

However, 80-year-old Ecclestone, who is the sport's commerical rights holder, dismissed the story as "rubbish", and told the Telegraph: "The sport is not for sale."

F1 is currently owned by private equity firm CVC Capital Partners which paid $2.5bn for the sport just over five years ago. The Sky report said that the current owners were unaware of the discussions between Murdoch and Slim.

However, no concrete bid can be made until the end next year, when the current Concorde Agreement between the sport's governing body and the teams, which dictates the distribution of commercial revenues, expires. A source told the Guardian: "They will do nothing until after the next Concorde meeting – there is no way to possibly value or plan until after that."

Although Sky has close links with many sports, most notably football and the English Premier League, which it helped set up in 1992, it has never actually owned a sport or held the rights to F1 - although it did broadcast the now defunct A1GP series.

The BBC currently shows the races and has a deal until the end of the 2013 season. If Sky were to take over the sport it would surely acquire the broadcast rights when the deal ended, if not before, even though F1 has traditionally been shown on free-to-air TV.

Another major obstacle facing Murdoch will be the presence of Max Mosley, the former president of the FIA, on the sport's governing body. Mosley's private life was exposed by the Murdoch-owned News of the World newspaper in 2007 prompting Mosley to take the paper to court and launch a privacy campaign. He is unlikely to be well disposed to the idea of Murdoch owning F1 and could encourage the FIA to veto any deal. ·