Bill Rasmussen, a sports 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 Parkinson’s disease at his home in Florida.
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 Sept. 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. “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.”
More to come
