Lakers’ Buss Shows Interest in Dodgers

The bidding for the Los Angeles Dodgers remained mostly the stuff of speculation Wednesday, with one more person, Lakers owner Jerry Buss, tossing his hat in the ring.

Buss, owner of the Lakers and the Forum since 1979 and the first current sports owner to put his name forth, has never hid his interest in expanding his horizons to football or baseball.

Buss, who also owned the L.A. Kings hockey team from 1979 through early 1988, said Wednesday night, through a spokesman, that while he agrees that family sports ownership such as the O’Malley’s is in decline, “I’m the biggest Dodgers fan in Los Angeles. I’d like to be part of a group that buys them.”

The Buss family is believed to own all but 10% of the Lakers, with the remainder owned by TV executive Bill Daniels and former Laker star Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

The first names surfacing Tuesday as potential Dodger buyers were Peter Ueberroth, former baseball commissioner; Robert Shapiro, celebrity lawyer; and Robert Daly, co-chairman of the music and film divisions of Time Warner. Each indicated a desire to head or be part of a purchasing group.

Despite the interested parties, at least one potential bidder said the team has not yet taken such preliminary steps as preparing a financial package for investors or hiring investment bankers to appraise proposals.

“He hasn’t even started,” said an entertainment executive involved in the sports business, referring to Dodgers President Peter O’Malley. “There’s no book” of financial documentation.

The same conclusion was reached Wednesday by Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who said he had talked briefly with some investors interested in acquiring the team. “It’s premature because Peter O’Malley hasn’t even set up a process yet” for accepting bids, said Riordan, who would not identify his contacts.

Riordan, a multimillionaire businessman, said he briefly considered bidding for at least a part ownership in the team but quickly abandoned the idea because it might conflict with his role as mayor.

On Monday, O’Malley stunned the sports world and Los Angeles with his announcement that he was putting the Dodgers, which his family has owned since 1950, up for sale. Estimates of the value of the blue-chip franchise on the open market have been as high as $300 million. That would be a baseball record, easily outstripping the $173 million paid for the Baltimore Orioles by an investment syndicate in 1993.

O’Malley’s apparent go-slow approach to fielding offers--one financier familiar with the process said it might take from six months to two years--only encouraged speculation about bidders.

Rumored names of other interested parties range from billionaires such as members of the Pritzker family, the founders of the Hyatt Hotel chain, to celebrities such as actor Kevin Costner.

The name most often mentioned continued to be media baron Rupert Murdoch, mainly because of the apparent logic of using the Dodgers to enhance the value of his regional Fox sports network.

Fox has contractual relationships with major league baseball and the Dodgers. Murdoch is building the launch of his Fox Sports West 2 cable channel around the broadcast of 40 Dodger games this year. His Fox broadcast television network will air a major-league game every week this season, as well as the All-Star Game and the American League playoffs.

Still, investment and entertainment professionals are divided over whether Fox would gain more from owning the Dodgers outright than it might by taking a minority interest or simply licensing cable and broadcast rights.

Major-league owners and cable system operators would also be hostile to any attempt by Murdoch to combine the Dodgers and his fledgling satellite TV operations into global broadcasting of the team’s games--the way Ted Turner turned his WTBS Atlanta TV station into a profitable “superstation” by televising his Atlanta Braves nationwide starting in the 1970s.

Baseball has since tightened the rules for broadcast contracts to force rebidding of broadcast rights every four or five years, compared to the 20 that Turner awarded himself. The owners have also turned down some ownership bids by broadcasters seeking superstation deals.

Fox executives declined to comment Wednesday on the speculation.

Also coming into question Wednesday was whether the Dodger organization harbors as much untapped revenue potential as investment pros have guessed.

O’Malley has rejected such common revenue enhancers as selling his ballpark’s name to a corporate sponsor, a move that could produce $2 million to $3 million a year in licensing fees; allowing more advertising on Dodger Stadium’s field (the park has only one advertising billboard, touting Coca-Cola); selling a broader range of concessions; and installing luxury boxes.

“In my world, that place is almost virgin,” said one ad-savvy entertainment executive.

But there are serious questions about any buyer’s ability to profitably develop the team’s 300-acre parcel of land around the Chavez Ravine stadium, which is ringed by working-class neighborhoods.

The value of the team’s spring training complex in Vero Beach, Fla., would even lose value were the Dodgers relocated--to Arizona, say--to make way for its development as a resort, according to real estate professionals.

“Their leaving here would not be unlike their leaving Brooklyn,” said Milt Thomas, chief of the economic development council of the Vero Beach Chamber of Commerce, who said much of the town’s resort business comes from Easterners attending spring training.

Times staff writer Jean Merl contributed to this story.

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