Peter Wilkinson, the man widely credited with the creation of Freeserve, may be about to make another dot.com fortune after his latest venture, Sports Internet, confirmed it had received a takeover approach that could value his stake at about £120m.

A statement from the company confirmed it was in discussions with a mystery party that "may or may not lead to an offer being made for the company".

Analysts were last night betting that BSkyB, which is determined to build a market- leading portfolio of sports, news and entertainment websites, was behind the approach, despite reports that cable television rival NTL has also expressed an interest. Both companies refused to comment.

Freeserve, which already has an option over a small equity stake in Sports Internet, has been mooted as another possible bidder.

Shares in Sports Internet, which operates the Planetfootball.com websites, OPTA sports statistics and an off-shore betting company, closed 80p higher at 712.5p, valuing the group at £242m. The shares peaked at 887.5p earlier this year.

Sports Internet only joined the alternative investment market in March 1999 and last May handed over shares worth £24m plus £650,000 in cash to Mr Wilkinson to take control of Leeds-based Planetfootball.

He now holds 44% of the company that designs, builds and maintains a portfolio of websites for Premier League clubs including Aston Villa, Leeds United, Newcastle United and West Ham.

If the deal goes through it will complete a remarkable two years for Mr Wilkinson. Even before the value of his Sports Internet shares increased by £100m, he was counting a newly made multi-million pound fortune.

In August 1998 he received £25m when Planet Online, a company he had founded just three years earlier, was sold to Energis, the telecoms group, for £75m.

He then engineered Dixons' hugely successful Freeserve internet access service which the retailer set up with Energis. Mr Wilkinson has a lucrative royalty deal linked to traffic generated by Freeserve's 1.8m plus users.

Mr Wilkinson, who lives near Harrogate with his wife and four children, has two other businesses - a computer distributor, Storm, which he used to jointly own with Yorkshire property tycoon Paul Sykes, and VData, an offsite data storage organisation.

He guards his privacy closely, rarely talks to journalists and dislikes leaving his native county. He describes himself as "a typical Yorkshireman - a Scotsman without the generosity".

The potential sale of Sports Internet will come as little surprise to Mr Wilkinson's friends to whom he has talked colloquially about "boshing this thing out quickly".

Sports Internet was set up by former Leeds United chief executive Chris Akers. His stake is valued at £14m. Last night he refused to comment.