Sure, here is a more detailed paraphrase of the text:The billionaires who stood outside their fathers' shadows: the 30-year friendship of James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch.

From business rivals to best friends, Lachlan Murdoch (pictured with his wife Sarah in 1999) and James Packer have a relationship that spans more than 30 years.

When billionaire James Packer agreed to do an interview about his friend Lachlan Murdoch, my producer and I dropped everything to fly to Las Vegas.

Packer was in town to watch the rugby league's 'Vegas Round' extravaganza from the Fox Sports box where Lachlan was playing host.

We knew James could tell us a lot because he knows Lachlan well and they have much in common.

They even share a birthday, September 8, although James is four years older.

Lachlan Murdoch spent much of his adult life in the shadow of his father Rupert, perhaps the most powerful media mogul the world has known.

Third-generation media heirs, Packer and Murdoch have lived parallel but contrasting lives – like twin strands of DNA, they have tracked the same lows and highs, all the while remaining very different characters.

Lachlan stayed in his father's business, while James got out.

Lachlan stayed married; James has twice divorced.

James Packer inherited his family fortune and media empire at age 38 when his father Kerry Packer died.

But if we are all stamped early on, the defining characteristic of both men is that they grew up in the shadow of media moguls – in James's case, the late Kerry Packer, long Australia's richest man; in Lachlan's case, Rupert Murdoch, perhaps the most influential Australian in history.

The long shadow cast by their famous fathers has shaped every aspect of their lives.

In James's case, it has driven him out of the media, and ultimately out of Australia, the country of his birth.

In Lachlan's case, he is only now emerging from Rupert's shadow and may never leave it completely, even after his father dies, no matter where he chooses to live.

Where their fathers butted heads on some business matters, Lachlan and James were able to come together and make deals—for better or worse.

Packer was comfortably ensconced in the presidential suite at Wynn casinos.

According to Packer's adviser, he'd booked a more modest room but Wynn's management recognized the Packer name (the doorman told me everyone had fond memories of Kerry's Sin City exploits) and immediately upgraded him to their best accommodation.

It was a two-storey multi-room apartment in the luxury wing of the complex, with its own private pool and garden.

We set up in the big entertainment area, with its own bar.

Outside, palm trees bent and cushions flapped on banana chairs as 100 kph desert winds howled through Vegas, causing airport chaos.

Inside, it was quiet and snug.

Accompanied by his new girlfriend and his minders, James was warm and welcoming, if a little awkward about the opulence of the suite.

Though his battles with mental health have been well chronicled, James was calm and sharp under the glare of cameras through a long interview.

He knew what he wanted to say about the friend he sees maybe half a dozen times a year.

'[Lachlan] is one of my favourite people in the world,' he said.

'I adore him.

He's been an amazingly good friend to me through good times and bad times.

'NRL CEO Andrew Abdo, Lachlan Murdoch and ARL chairman Peter V'landys prior to the NRL match between Manly and South Sydney in Las Vegas in March.

The bad times came first.

James went out of his way to welcome Lachlan to Australia when he came from New York in 1994, a fresh-faced 22-year-old, not long out of college.

James invited Lachlan out to a Sydney restaurant, where they were immediately recognized and written up in the gossip pages.

But not long after, they were pitched headlong into the Super League wars, when News Corp tried to privatize rugby league and use it as fodder for its new pay-TV business Foxtel, a joint venture with Telstra.

The Packer-owned Nine Network, which held the broadcast rights to the rugby league and was aligned with a rival pay-TV venture, saw News Corp's bid as an existential threat.

It was on for young and old, and Lachlan and James were at the frontlines, signing lucrative contracts with players in a race for the best talent in the game.

The hostility was intense—Packer describes it as 'dog eat dog' and admits his relationship with Lachlan became 'strained'—and both sides were in and out of court.

In early 1997, at the height of the crisis, with rugby league now running as a split competition, James invited Lachlan for a cruise on his father's superyacht Arctic P—appropriately, given the circumstances, a converted icebreaker.

It was a prelude to peace between the two families.

Lachlan took his then best friend Joe Cross and his brother James.

Also on the boat was Kathryn Hufschmid, who would later become James Murdoch's wife.

'That's where James and Kathryn met for the first time,' Packer recalls.

'I also remember that Lachlan and I probably drank too much.

And, you know, Lachlan and I have enjoyed over the years having a drink together.

' The ground was laid for a reunification of the game to form today's National Rugby League and to divide the pay TV spoils.

Foxtel would become a joint venture between News Corp, Nine and Telstra.

James and Lachlan's fathers subsequently did a handshake deal on their yachts off New Zealand.

'When it became obvious to everyone that it made sense for the codes to recombine, I think Lachlan and I probably played a constructive role in getting our respective fathers to the table to do that,' Packer recalls.

Both sides lost a fortune during the Super League wars and hopes for an international competition never eventuated but the rapprochement initiated by James and Lachlan set the stage for closer collaboration between the two families.

'What Super League demonstrated is if the families worked together, we could make things happen,' Packer says.

'I remember going to Lachlan one day,' Packer recalls, 'and saying, 'Instead of looking at this small pie that's free-to-air television, why don't we actually think about taking on the big pie?'' That 'big pie' was telecommunications.

These were the heady days of the early dotcom boom and all the talk was about the convergence of media, technology and finance.

James Packer persuaded Lachlan Murdoch that News Corp should invest half a billion dollars in an upstart mobile phone company called One.

Tel.

Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer with Brad Keeling (left) and Jodee Rich, managing directors of the ill-fated telecommunications company One.

Tel.

When the dotcom bubble burst and, the Packer and Murdoch's companies lost almost a billion dollars combined.

It was a very public humiliation for both men and a big hit to shareholders.

To this day, Packer takes the blame for the failure of One.

Tel, and for convincing News to invest.

Lachlan Murdoch had relied on Packer, who was close friends with founder Jodee Rich, and testified during later court hearings that James had burst into tears when he apologized for the disaster in his kitchen in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

'One.

Tel was 99 percent my fault,' says Packer, who admits he had a breakdown in the aftermath.

'Lachlan was incredibly loyal to me.

He saw that I was hurting.

I think he took the view that I didn't do it on purpose…and that's something that I'll never forget.

'Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer arrive at the federal inquiry into the collapse of One.

Tel after the telco was placed into administration in 2001 with debts of more than $600 million.

Somewhat surprisingly, the humiliation the two junior moguls suffered after One.

Tel's collapse only strengthened the friendship between them.

'One.

Tel went broke at the end of May 2001 and September 8th, our birthday, was Lachlan's 30th birthday,' Packer recalls.

'So out of nowhere, I get this invitation.

If I was Lachlan, I think I'd probably never speak to me again.

So Lachlan is giving a speech and in the middle he stops and says that I'm there and it's my birthday and he wants to wish me happy birthday.

And it was one of the most moving things that's ever happened to me in my life.

' It's easy to be loyal when things are going well,' Packer says.

'It's when times are bad that you really see who's genuine and who's not genuine.

'There was one silver lining to the One.

Tel debacle, for Lachlan Murdoch at least.

In the aftermath of the tech wreck, which had contributed to the breakdown of investor confidence in One.

Tel, Murdoch was persuaded to invest in the website realestate.

com.

au, which was going broke.

News Corp invested a bit over $10 million—about $3 million in cash and the rest in contra advertising—to acquire a minority stake in the company.

It would prove to be an extraordinarily canny investment.

That struggling website went on to become REA Group, a digital real estate giant that News Corp eventually took control of and which is now worth about $US25 billion ($37.

4 billion).

'REA is, you know, the best media deal ever done in Australia,' Packer says.

'When I say that I'm saying Lachlan's deal to take control of REA was a better media deal than any deal Rupert ever did in Australia.

I'm saying Lachlan's deal to take control of REA was a better media deal than my father ever did in Australia.

' Lachlan (pictured in 2001) initially invested $10 million in