Dodgers Name Executives for Murdoch Era

The Dodgers on Thursday officially unveiled their management team for Year One of the Rupert Murdoch era, naming longtime owner Peter O’Malley as chairman of the board and Executive Vice President Robert Graziano as president and chief executive officer.

The announcements were made at a Dodger Stadium news conference shortly after Fox Group, Murdoch’s U.S. cable and broadcast television unit, signed a formal agreement to purchase the team from the O’Malley family.

That happened a day after Fox and the team were given permission to close the deal by the ownership committee of major league baseball, but it is still contingent on a vote of the other owners, which is expected Thursday.

“We’re locked in with management we think is critical to completing this transaction and carrying it forward,” said Peter Chernin, president and chief executive of News Corp., the parent company of Fox. Chernin appeared at the news conference with Chase Carey, chairman and chief executive of Fox Television.

The value of the deal has never been announced, but sources have placed it at roughly $311 million. The sale includes not only the team and Dodger Stadium, but the Dodgertown spring training facility in Vero Beach, Fla., and the team’s training facility in the Dominican Republic.

Thursday’s announcement came as Fox executives pledged to move slowly in making changes to the team and Dodger Stadium. Nevertheless, in recent interviews with The Times, Chernin and Carey made these points:

* Fans can expect some ticket price increases, but they are likely to be concentrated at the high end of the price range to keep cheaper seats as accessible as possible to families. Fox is likely to install luxury boxes and suites to serve corporate and high-end customers.

The team’s 1997 average ticket price was $11.15, near the average for major league baseball but well below that of other sports in Southern California. The Dodgers have not raised reserve or general admission prices, the two least expensive categories, in nine years.

* The team will not take advantage of Fox’s deep financial pockets to overbid for players.

“We have no interest in running the team as a loss leader or a charity,” Chernin said. “If anyone thinks we’re here to be a stalking horse [for higher player salaries], they will be disabused of that notion.”

* Fox and News Corp. will comply with major league baseball rules in exploiting the marketing potential of the Dodgers in Asia and other overseas markets where Murdoch owns powerful cable and satellite broadcasting systems. Those rules say that international rights can be exploited only through the commissioner’s office, not by individual teams.

* Fox, Carey said, has no plans to move Dodger spring training from Florida to Arizona, as has long been speculated.

* Fox is under no obligation to sell any part of its interest in the Dodgers to Liberty Media, a subsidiary of the giant cable operator Tele-Communications Inc.

Earlier this year, a Liberty executive contended that a long-standing agreement gave Liberty an option to buy half of any sports business Fox acquired. Both entities have announced that Liberty had waived its rights to the Dodgers stake after it became clear that the option might be a significant obstacle to baseball owners’ approval of the Fox deal.

Chernin and Carey were clearly circumspect in discussing changes to the team and Fox’s relationship with its future co-owners in advance of Thursday’s vote. The sale of the Dodgers must be approved by three-quarters of the 16 National League team owners and half of the 14 American League owners.

Many of Chernin and Carey’s remarks were at least partially aimed at assuaging continuing concerns among the baseball lords at allowing the aggressive Murdoch organization into the ownership fraternity.

There have been concerns that Fox might place the welfare of its far-flung broadcast properties above its obligations to its baseball partners in striking overseas deals. Chernin and Carey, however, insisted that Fox and the Dodgers would benefit the most by working within the structure of organized baseball.

Both also indicated that Graziano, long a right-hand man to O’Malley, will be running the team for the near future. O’Malley said his commitment to serve as Dodger chairman extended only to the end of this year, and signs are that his role will chiefly be to give the team an aura of leadership continuity during the transitional period.

The extent of Graziano’s authority remains unclear. Chernin said he and Carey will share with the new Dodger chief executive the responsibility to attend league owner meetings and other ownership obligations, and Graziano will report to the Fox Group.

Chernin said that it’s unlikely that Murdoch, who is widely reported to have little interest in sports except as a potent source of broadcast programming, will exercise much day-to-day authority over the team--as opposed to setting an overall and general strategy.

“Sports is a big part of our business,” Carey said. “It’s more and more a driving force [in broadcasting].”

“Rupert Murdoch is a boogeyman for some people,” Chernin said. “This is a big multinational corporation with operations on five continents. If Murdoch was doing all of the day-to-day actions people attribute to him, he’d be working 100 hours a day. I don’t think you’ll see him all that involved in minutiae.”

O’Malley said he expected some negative votes Thursday but not the five necessary to kill the deal in the National League.

“If I didn’t think the votes were going to be there I wouldn’t [have agreed to sell to Fox in the first place],” he said.

If his own diminished role in the deal is approved, O’Malley said, “you’re looking at a very young and very happy chairman of the board. It’s a perfect role for me, and CEO is a perfect role for Bob.”

* DODGERTOWN REACTS: Spring training camp responds emotionally to news. C20