In the third episode of the final season of Succession (spoiler alert), Logan Roy, founder and head of Waystar Royco, dies of a heart attack aboard his private jet. For two full seasons leading up to this moment, Roy never declared who among his three children would inherit his media empire. Jesse Armstrong, the show’s creator, has always insisted that despite the similarities, the Roy family is not based on the Murdochs, who control the global media giants Fox Corporation and News Corp. He said he drew inspiration from several billionaire families.
Five years before Armstrong killed off Logan Roy on screen, Rupert Murdoch stumbled on his way to the bathroom aboard a yacht owned by his son Lachlan that was en route to the Caribbean. He was taken to a Los Angeles hospital with an epidural hematoma. His then-wife, Jerry Hall, called his other three children—Prudence, James and Elisabeth—who were dreaming of inheriting the empire, to come and say goodbye. Together with Lachlan, the four surrounded their father’s hospital bed, ready to fight for their inheritance. But unlike the series, Murdoch, then 87, survived and recovered. Now, at 94, he has lived to see the succession battle end with victory for his chosen son.
Lachlan received word of his win at his 54th birthday party earlier this month. The family empire, built over more than 70 years by Rupert, is now officially his. A $3.3 billion deal with three of his five siblings guarantees Lachlan control of the company until at least 2050. Each of the three siblings—Prudence, 67; Elisabeth, 57; and James, 52—will receive $1.1 billion. Rupert’s two youngest daughters, Grace, 24, and Chloe, 22, from his marriage to Wendi Deng, will benefit from a separate trust.
A happy ending for all sides
In the end, everyone seems to get what they want. Lachlan gains control. Prudence, Elisabeth and James—who are all less conservative—get to detach from a media empire they often opposed politically while adding more than a billion dollars to their inheritance. They also secured far more than Lachlan initially offered during negotiations. Rupert, for his part, receives the assurance that his life’s work, which he once described as “a shield for the conservative voice in the English-speaking world,” will continue.
Rupert Murdoch stepped down as chairman two years ago, handing over power to his son. Since then, Lachlan has served as executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation, which runs Fox News. He is also chairman of News Corp, the family’s publishing arm that owns HarperCollins. In the past two years, he has acquired digital media firm Red Seat Ventures, launched the Fox One streaming app and bought a third of Penske Entertainment, owner of the IndyCar racing series.
The most important aspect of the succession deal is not day-to-day operations, but rather that it preserves Rupert Murdoch’s conservative project—an unusual blend of ideology and business savvy. Seeing a gap in America’s media landscape, he rushed to fill it. One reason Rupert chose Lachlan was that he is the most conservative of his children. Ideology was the top priority.
Lachlan, the third of Rupert’s six children, was born in London in 1971 and raised in New York. He studied philosophy at Princeton and showed conservative leanings even in high school. In a 2022 speech at a conservative think tank, he warned about “relentless attacks on core values” and the rewriting of history—language that echoed right-wing cultural critiques, though the exact phrasing differs in reports.
For more than a year, Rupert and Lachlan pressed to amend the family trust, which had been set to expire in 2030. Under the original terms, if Rupert had died before then, Prudence, Elisabeth and James could have formed a voting bloc to block Lachlan from keeping Fox’s conservative line. After 2030, they would have been free to sell their shares, effectively ending family control.
After graduating, Lachlan moved to Australia, his father’s homeland, to work in the family newspaper business. He stumbled several times but scored one major win: acquiring 60 percent of real estate advertising firm REA Group, now worth billions. Returning to New York as deputy chief operating officer of News Corp, Lachlan clashed with Roger Ailes, Fox News’ powerful chief. Rupert sided with Ailes, and Lachlan quit the company in 2005, returning to Australia.
He spent the next decade investing in Australian media while his younger brother James took on larger roles at News Corp. Lachlan returned in 2014, after a reconciliation. Ailes died in 2017, less than a year after leaving Fox amid sexual misconduct allegations. Since then, Rupert and Lachlan have been inseparable. In 2019, Lachlan played a central role in selling 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets to Disney in a $72 billion deal—cementing his place as heir apparent.
Family divisions
As early as the 1990s, Rupert hinted that Lachlan, then in his 20s, could succeed him. But the decades since unfolded like a billionaire soap opera. His main rivals were James and Elisabeth. Prudence, his eldest daughter, preferred to stay on the sidelines. In practice, James was the only one who truly fought for the throne.
But his chances were crippled by two blows. First came the phone-hacking scandal at News of the World, a Murdoch tabloid shuttered in 2011 after it was revealed that reporters had hacked the phones of some 600 celebrities, politicians and even royals, while bribing police for information. James was then in charge of the company’s newspapers.
The second and final blow was the Trump era. James, far less conservative than his father or brother, resigned from the News Corp board in 2020. In an interview with The Atlantic earlier this year, he recalled expecting Lachlan to resist Trump’s rise but was stunned when Lachlan backed him. James did not use the phrase “disgusting stance” verbatim, though Israeli coverage paraphrased his frustration in those terms.
“I think James is embarrassed by Fox News. I don’t think Lachlan is,” Australian billionaire James Packer said last year. “Lachlan is proud of Fox News, and that’s probably one reason why he is where he is, and James is not.”
Lachlan’s willingness to let Fox News hosts promote false claims about the 2020 election was revealed in court documents from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit. Fox ultimately settled for $787.5 million, and star host Tucker Carlson was forced out. But Lachlan’s reputation remained largely unscathed. Fox not only survived—it grew in viewership and influence.
Murdoch’s empire is now more powerful than ever in Trump’s America. Fox News’ reach represents the realization of Ailes’ vision. A close adviser to President Richard Nixon, Ailes founded the channel convinced that if Nixon had a media arm like Fox, he would never have resigned after Watergate. Even Ailes probably did not imagine how right he was.
Keeping the legacy alive
The succession plan Rupert and Lachlan called “Project Family Harmony” mirrors the current deal: the siblings get money, Lachlan gets the empire. It caused friction within the family, but Rupert—arguably one of the most influential figures of the past 30 years—was not about to change course. For him, nothing mattered more than protecting his legacy, which began 71 years ago with a small newspaper in Adelaide he inherited from his father—only after buying out his own brother’s share, much as Lachlan has now done with his siblings.
Lachlan is married to former model Sarah Murdoch, with whom he has three children. The family relocated to Sydney during the COVID-19 pandemic, and he now calls himself a “proud Australian.” The looming question is whether he can devote himself to the kind of political influence his father wielded in America—and whether he can do so while living 14 hours from New York and 17 from Los Angeles. Last year he flew all of Fox’s top executives to Australia for budget meetings, but it is unclear if that is sustainable. If necessary, he could always return to Los Angeles, where he owns an estate with 18 bedrooms and 24 bathrooms.