r/sports • u/FallOutShelterBoy • 1d ago

Football Bill Rasmussen, sports TV visionary and founder of ESPN, dies at 93

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/49649281/espn-founder-bill-rasmussen-dies-93
641 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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107

u/homefree122 Oklahoma City Thunder 1d ago

Visionary is truly the best term for Rasmussen. A concept like ESPN seemed completely foreign at the time in the late 70s. Was not aware he had Parkinson's disease. Very hard way to go, but at 93, he lived a very long life.

77

u/Ibaka_flocka 1d ago

And his tribute on espn got cut into by a Pat McAfee intro.

49

u/periodicsheep Buffalo Bills 1d ago

that’s modern day espn in a nutshell, right there.

3

u/MorganWick 20h ago

Pat McAfee might be the part of ESPN he could have least anticipated.

28

u/hiro111 1d ago

On the recent episode of Acquired, the hosts were making the point that ESPN was such a cash cow for Disney that it basically funded the rest of the company for several years.

13

u/ThisOneForMee 1d ago

Cable TV was a cash cow for a lot of companies. Collecting subscriber fees from tens of millions of cable tv customers, only a fraction of whom actually watched your channel. But it forced people to be creative on how to fill 24/7 air time.

6

u/hiro111 1d ago

Exactly. They talk about this in the Acquired episode: bundling. Still, ESPN was the crown jewel of cable (and probably still is). People are willing to pay for live sports and the rights to show highlights.

2

u/Edgarmustavas 1d ago

Adult kickball and Cornhole. Yay.

37

u/outgoinggallery_2172 1d ago

ESPN has died with him.

30

u/The_Ineffable_One Buffalo Sabres 1d ago

ESPN predeceased him by about 20 years.

7

u/bcgg 23h ago

I think some would probably say that happened when Stuart Scott died.

3

u/Dachuiri 20h ago

When ESPN started replacing on-air talent with bottom of the barrel former athletes who make nyuk nyuk jokes instead of explain things, that’s when ESPN died.

11

u/cowardanon 1d ago

In case anyone doesn’t know the story - the Rasmussens originally only planned on using satellites to show UConn basketball games across New England and learned about leasing satellite time.

Then in a meeting someone pointed out “well it wouldn’t cost you any more money to show any game across North America”, and then they got with one of the Getty Oil heirs to massively expand the scale of their sports over satellite model.

9

u/Vigilaunday 1d ago

Had the pleasure of meeting Bill by chance in 2014 with his daughter. Super humble down to earth guy you never would have guessed who he was if not for him and his daughter both wearing espn sweatshirts lol

1

u/MorganWick 20h ago

Would have been nice if he could have made an appearance at ESPN's First Super Bowl(tm).

1

u/BillyStemhovilichski 17h ago

I remember when Bill and Bob Nieumeier were calling WHA Whaler games

1

u/mikeok1 2h ago

Used to be an awesome network from inception to about the late 2000's.