Interstate 84 is a highway across the state of Connecticut that Bill and Scott Rasmussen will never forget. For it was there – – in the hot, sticky confines of a car in a traffic jam — that an irritable conversation took place between father and son that birthed the entire ESPN service offering.
Some 14 months after this spirited discussion, with the proverbial blood, sweat and tears having been shed, Bill Rasmussen’s vision for ESPN came into being, funded by a $9,000 credit card advance. At 7 p.m. (Eastern) on Sept. 7, 1979, ESPN host Lee Leonard introduced the network to viewers for the first time. His first words were, “If you’re a fan, if you’re a fan, what you’ll see in the next minutes, hours and days to follow may convince you you’ve gone to sports heaven.”
The main TV networks may have expected ESPN to crash and burn but the network soared and kept on soaring. Today, it’s in more than 100 million U.S. homes with a global presence in 200 countries.
By its slogan and supporting statistics, ESPN is the “worldwide leader in sports.” I interviewed one of the company’s co-founders, Bill Rasmussen, and he told me about ESPN’s “David and Goliath” battle with the major TV networks, the obstacles ESPN overcame to become the worldwide leader in sports and his take on whether entrepreneurs should get an MBA.
You co-founded ESPN with your son, Scott, and insurance agent, Ed Eagan. What roles did you all play in starting the company?
Rasmussen: My son did a lot…