Bill Rasmussen, a visionary who founded ESPN in 1979 with his son Scott as the world’s first 24-hour sports television network, died Tuesday at 93 of the effects of Parkinson’s disease at his home in Florida.
Rasmussen revealed in 2019 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a degenerative disease, in 2014.
Shrugging off skeptics, the pioneering Rasmussen – after being fired as communications director of the New England Whalers — acquired space on a communications satellite using a personal credit card. He went door to door to all the major sports leagues, cable operators and potential investors, garnering enough support to launch the Entertainment and Sports Programming network on September 7, 1979. He was the network’s first CEO.
“Bill was a remarkable man — a visionary and an innovator who conceived the idea of a network entirely devoted to sports,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement today. “Quite simply, none of us would be here today if it wasn’t for Bill’s passion and all the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit he put into building ESPN in the late 1970s — key aspects of our company culture that still carry on to this day.”
The Rasmussens secured early financial backing from Getty Oil and a rights deal with the NCAA. The studio in Bristol, CT, was still under construction when ESPN went on the air, the AP reported. Sports commentator George Grande welcomed viewers to the first SportsCenter broadcast before the network’s first live event, a slow-pitch softball game between the Kentucky Bourbons and the Milwaukee Schlitz.
Father and son stayed only a year at the network they founded, which was 85% owned by Getty Oil. Texaco, which acquired Getty, sold the stake to ABC in 1984.
In 1999, network executives reconnected, inviting Rasmussen to the network’s 20th anniversary festivities.
He was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2025.
Bill Rasmussen was born in Chicago, earned degrees from DePauw University in Indiana and Rutgers and went on to served in the Air Force. He started an advertising services business then worked in radio and TV as a broadcaster in the 1960s.
He was hired by the Whalers in 1974 in Hartford, CT, but left amid layoffs in 1978 when he and Scott Rasmussen began plotting the first sports network on cable TV.
Rasumussen is survived by his two sons, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Lois, his wife of 56 years, passed away in 2011.
