Soros makes his pitch

Billionaire in bid for baseball bastion.

For the last six years the LA Dodgers, Los Angeles' Major League baseball team, have been the plaything of Rupert Murdoch. Now they look set to fall into the hands of a billionaire of an altogether different kind – George Soros.

Mr Murdoch's News Corporation bought the Dodgers in 1997 for a then record $310m (£190m). But the team never gave the Australian media mogul quite the leverage in US sports that he had hoped for, while a similar bid in the UK for Manchester United fell foul of British regulators. After recording over $100m of losses for News Corp, the Dodgers are being sold. The buyer, paying the princely sum of $620m, is David Checketts, a New York-based sports executive, who came to prominence when he ran Utah Jazz, a basketball team. But documents lodged with Major League Baseball, the sport's ruling body, reveal that Mr Checketts has an interesting backer – Mr Soros.

The Hungarian-born in-vestor and philanthropist is putting $100m into the bid, which should give him about a third of the shares. The consortium is trying to raise a $300m loan from a group of banks including JP Morgan and FleetBoston Financial to complete the bid.

The sale is complicated because News Corp wants to hold on to the Dodgers' majority stake in Fox Sport Net 2, a cable channel that televises Dodgers games. However, Mr Checketts is insisting the TV business is part of the deal.

Media experts in the US believe Mr Murdoch may cave in because he wants the money to help fund a bid for DirectTV, the satellite TV business owned by Hughes Corporation. A joint bid with John Malone, the cable TV mogul, fell apart and Mr Malone is expected to vie with News Corp for DirecTV.

Mr Soros is not known for his sporting interests, though he once owned an indirect stake in Southend United football club through a property investment.