ESPN

Based on Wikipedia: ESPN

Born From Unemployment

The most influential sports media empire in history began with a firing.

In May 1978, Bill Rasmussen lost his job with the New England Whalers, a hockey team in a league most Americans had never heard of. Rather than wallowing, Rasmussen did something audacious: he conceived of a television channel devoted entirely to sports. Not a show, not a time slot—an entire channel, broadcasting sports content around the clock.

The idea seemed preposterous. At the time, sports on television meant occasional weekend games on the major networks. The notion that there was enough demand to sustain a twenty-four-hour sports channel struck most industry observers as delusional. Where would the content come from? Who would watch bowling tournaments at two in the morning?

Rasmussen recruited his son Scott, who had also been let go by the Whalers, and a partner named Ed Eagan. They rented office space in Plainville, Connecticut, and immediately encountered their first obstacle: a local ordinance prohibited buildings from bearing rooftop satellite dishes. This may seem like a trivial bureaucratic hurdle, but satellite technology was essential to their business model. Cable systems across the country needed to receive the signal somehow.

They found available land in nearby Bristol, Connecticut, where local officials proved more accommodating. Bristol would become the permanent headquarters of what they called the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network—a name later shortened to just the initials ESPN, when the original felt too cumbersome.

The Oil Company That Built Sports Television

Here's something that seems almost absurd in retrospect: the company that made ESPN financially viable was Getty Oil.

In February 1979, Getty purchased eighty-five percent of Rasmussen's fledgling company. The oil giant was attempting to diversify its holdings, and a sports television network represented about as far from petroleum exploration as one could get. This investment gave ESPN credibility—suddenly, conversations with potential advertisers and cable operators went differently when you could mention that Getty Oil was backing the venture.

But credibility only goes so far. The real breakthrough came months later when Anheuser-Busch, the brewing giant behind Budweiser, agreed to invest one million dollars to become the exclusive beer advertiser on the network. This was 1979 money, mind you—equivalent to roughly four million dollars today. For a channel that didn't yet exist, this represented an enormous vote of confidence.

On September 7, 1979, ESPN launched with the first broadcast of SportsCenter, taped in front of a small live audience in the Bristol studios. The signal reached 1.4 million cable subscribers across the United States. To put this in perspective, that's roughly the population of San Diego at the time—a substantial audience, but a tiny fraction of the American television market.

Creating Television Events Out of Thin Air

ESPN's genius lay not in broadcasting games that were already popular, but in transforming overlooked events into appointment television.

Consider the National Football League draft. Before ESPN, selecting college players was a mundane administrative process that happened in hotel conference rooms. Teams made their picks, reporters dutifully recorded the names, and newspapers published the results the next day. Nobody thought of it as entertainment.

In April 1980, ESPN began televising the draft live. This sounds unremarkable now, but think about what they were asking viewers to do: watch men in suits announce names and shake hands. No athletic competition. No spectacular plays. Just anticipation, speculation, and the slow revelation of which young men would wear which uniforms.

It worked. The draft became a multi-day television event, complete with expert analysis, mock projections, and heated debates about which team had made the shrewdest selections. ESPN had discovered something important: sports fans would watch almost anything related to their favorite teams, provided someone presented it with enough drama and expertise.

The same approach transformed March Madness. ESPN acquired the rights to broadcast early rounds of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I men's basketball tournament in 1980. These were games between obscure schools that casual fans had never heard of—but ESPN treated them as compelling drama. Every upset became a story. Every underdog became a protagonist. Dick Vitale, freshly fired as head coach of the Detroit Pistons, found a new career as ESPN's basketball evangelist, his enthusiasm turning college games into entertainment spectacles.

The Corporate Shuffle

Understanding ESPN's evolution requires following a somewhat dizzying chain of corporate ownership.

Getty Oil, despite providing crucial early funding, proved to be a passive owner. The company wouldn't provide the money needed to compete for major sports contracts, so ESPN lost bidding wars for the National Hockey League broadcasting rights (which went to USA Network) and college football games (which went to Turner Broadcasting System, better known as TBS). The established professional leagues—the National Football League, National Basketball Association, and Major League Baseball—refused to even consider cable television as a legitimate broadcasting medium.

In 1984, the American Broadcasting Company—ABC—purchased the entirety of ESPN from Getty Oil and the Rasmussen family. This transformed everything. ABC was one of the three major broadcast networks, with deep pockets and established relationships throughout the sports world. Suddenly ESPN could compete for premium content.

That same year, the Supreme Court ruled in a case involving the University of Oklahoma that the National Collegiate Athletic Association could no longer monopolize the negotiation of broadcast contracts for college football. Schools could now make their own deals. ESPN moved aggressively, acquiring rights to numerous games and creating something genuinely new: multiple college football broadcasts every weekend. Before this, fans could watch exactly one game. Now they had choices.

Sunday Night Changes Everything

ESPN's breakthrough moment arrived in 1987 when the network secured a contract with the National Football League to broadcast eight regular-season games. All of them would air on Sunday nights.

This requires some context. For decades, professional football on television meant Sunday afternoon games on CBS and NBC, with occasional Monday night games on ABC. Sunday evening was not considered prime football territory. Families were having dinner, preparing for the work week, putting children to bed.

ESPN proved the conventional wisdom wrong. Sunday Night Football became the highest-rated NFL broadcast for seventeen consecutive years. The games drew viewers away from the afternoon broadcasts on the major networks, marking the first time ESPN had genuinely competed with—and beaten—the established broadcasting giants.

This success wasn't accidental. By the late 1980s, Americans were increasingly accustomed to cable television. ESPN had spent a decade building habits, training viewers to think of it as a legitimate destination for sports content. When premium NFL games arrived, the audience was ready.

Building an Empire

The 1990s saw ESPN expand from a single channel into something resembling a media conglomerate.

In 1992, the company launched ESPN Radio, a national network providing sports talk programming and live game broadcasts. This was more than mere brand extension—radio reached audiences in cars, at work, and in places where television couldn't follow. The sports conversation now continued around the clock, across multiple platforms.

Then came ESPN2 in October 1993. Originally, this secondary channel targeted a younger demographic with unconventional sports: snowboarding, skateboarding, the World Series of Poker. The network also served as overflow capacity when ESPN's schedule became too crowded. ESPN2 became the fastest-growing cable channel of the decade, eventually reaching seventy-five million subscribers.

The corporate ownership continued shuffling. Capital Cities Communications acquired ABC—and thus ESPN—in 1985. Then in 1996, the Walt Disney Company purchased Capital Cities/ABC. Disney remains the majority owner today, controlling eighty percent of the network, with Hearst Communications holding the remaining twenty percent.

The Invention of Sports Debate

ESPN didn't just broadcast games. It created an entire vocabulary for talking about sports.

SportsCenter, the flagship program, established a particular tone: irreverent, punchy, populated with catchphrases and inside jokes. Anchors like Chris Berman, who joined just one month after the network launched, became celebrities in their own right. Berman's nicknames for players—calling a fast runner "he could go all the way"—entered the common vernacular of sports discussion.

The network pioneered the sports debate format. Shows like Pardon the Interruption, launched in 2001, featured Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon arguing about the day's sports stories, complete with a ticking clock and point scoring. Around the Horn took the concept further, pitting four journalists against each other in competitive debates. First Take, featuring Stephen A. Smith's volcanic opinions, turned sports arguments into performance art.

These shows cost almost nothing to produce compared to live game broadcasts. A few commentators, a studio, some graphics—the investment was minimal while the viewership could be substantial. More importantly, the debates generated conversation. Viewers would argue with friends about who was right, extending ESPN's presence into everyday life.

Documentary Prestige

In 2009, ESPN launched 30 for 30, a documentary series that would fundamentally change how the network was perceived.

Each installment was directed by a different filmmaker, often established Hollywood directors, and examined a compelling sports story in depth. The format allowed for the kind of nuance and complexity that daily programming couldn't accommodate. Stories explored not just what happened on the field, but the cultural, political, and human dimensions of athletic competition.

The series reached its apex with O.J.: Made in America, a nearly eight-hour examination of O.J. Simpson's life and trial. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2017—ESPN's first Oscar. This was remarkable. A cable sports network had produced genuine cinema, recognized by the same institution that honored the works of Spielberg and Scorsese.

The Streaming Pivot

The 2010s brought an existential challenge. ESPN began hemorrhaging subscribers.

At its peak in 2011, ESPN reached approximately one hundred million American households. By December 2023, that number had declined to roughly seventy million. This wasn't because people loved ESPN less—it was because they were canceling cable television entirely. Cord-cutting, the industry called it. Younger viewers especially saw no reason to pay for hundreds of channels when they only wanted a few.

The financial model that had made ESPN fabulously profitable was built on bundling. Cable companies paid ESPN several dollars per subscriber per month—whether those subscribers watched sports or not. As the subscriber base shrank, so did the revenue, even as the cost of broadcasting rights continued to escalate.

ESPN responded with cost cutting that would have seemed unthinkable during the empire-building years. In April 2017, approximately one hundred employees received termination notices, including respected journalists and former athletes who had become familiar faces on the network. Studio operations consolidated. Programs were eliminated or reduced.

The strategic response came in April 2018 with the launch of ESPN+, a streaming service offering content that didn't appear on the traditional cable channel. This represented a fundamental shift in thinking. Rather than relying entirely on cable bundle economics, ESPN would build a direct relationship with subscribers willing to pay specifically for sports content.

The Gambling Revolution

For decades, American sports leagues and broadcasters maintained a careful distance from gambling. Betting on games was legal only in Nevada, and the prevailing attitude treated it as something vaguely shameful, a vice that threatened the integrity of athletic competition.

In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the federal law that had prohibited sports betting in most states. Within years, legal sportsbooks had opened across the country. The leagues that had once shunned gambling suddenly saw it as a revenue opportunity.

ESPN pivoted accordingly. In March 2019, the network launched Daily Wager, its first program dedicated entirely to betting-related content. Later that year, ESPN announced a deal with Caesars Entertainment to build an ESPN-branded studio in Las Vegas for producing gambling-focused programming.

The transformation accelerated in August 2023 when ESPN partnered with Penn Entertainment to rebrand Penn's sportsbooks as ESPN Bet. The network that had spent forty years covering games was now directly involved in wagering on them. Whether this represents smart business evolution or a troubling conflict of interest depends on whom you ask.

The Return of Hockey

ESPN's relationship with hockey tells an interesting story about broadcasting economics and corporate priorities.

The network last carried national NHL games in 2004, then walked away from the sport. For seventeen years, professional hockey existed outside ESPN's universe—the league's games appeared on NBC Sports and later on Turner's networks. Hockey fans who relied on ESPN for sports coverage simply didn't see their sport represented.

In March 2021, ESPN and ABC announced a seven-year deal to return to NHL broadcasting. The agreement included streaming rights for ESPN+ and Hulu, plus four of seven Stanley Cup Finals during the contract period. Hockey was back, integrated into ESPN's expanding digital ecosystem.

The NFL Network Acquisition

In August 2025, ESPN announced perhaps its most significant deal in years: an agreement to acquire NFL Media, pending regulatory approval.

Understanding what this means requires knowing what NFL Media actually includes. The National Football League operates its own television network—NFL Network—along with NFL RedZone, a channel that jumps between games to show every scoring play, and the league's official fantasy football service. These are valuable properties that the NFL had always kept in-house.

Under the proposed deal, ESPN would gain control of these assets. In exchange, the NFL would receive a ten percent equity stake in ESPN itself—meaning the league would become a part owner of its primary broadcast partner. NFL Network and RedZone would become part of ESPN's forthcoming streaming service. The NFL would license content from NFL Films to air on ESPN networks.

If approved by regulators, this would represent an unprecedented integration of a professional sports league with its broadcasting partner. The boundaries between covering the NFL and being part of the NFL would blur in ways that raise obvious journalistic questions. Can ESPN objectively report on a league in which it holds such deep financial entanglement? The network would argue that it has always navigated these tensions—after all, it pays billions for the right to broadcast NFL games. Skeptics might contend that this represents a qualitative leap toward something more troubling.

The Wrestling Connection

In August 2025, ESPN announced a five-year deal to stream World Wrestling Entertainment premium events on its streaming service, with some events simulcast on traditional ESPN channels.

This might seem like a strange fit. Wrestling is scripted entertainment, not sport in the traditional sense. The outcomes are predetermined, the rivalries manufactured, the athletic competition more theatrical than genuine. ESPN built its brand on authentic competition where the results were uncertain until the final whistle.

But the distinction matters less than it once did. ESPN has long broadcast poker tournaments, where luck plays an enormous role. It has covered competitive eating. The network's core promise isn't athletic purity—it's compelling content that engages viewers. By that measure, professional wrestling, with its devoted fanbase and dramatic storylines, fits perfectly well.

The International Footprint

ESPN is not merely an American phenomenon, though its domestic presence dominates the conversation.

Through ESPN International, the company operates regional channels across Africa, Australia, Latin America, and the Netherlands. Each territory receives programming tailored to local sports interests—cricket in Australia, soccer throughout Latin America, rugby in South Africa.

In Canada, ESPN owns a twenty percent stake in The Sports Network, known as TSN, along with its five sister channels. This represents an interesting structural arrangement: ESPN doesn't directly broadcast in Canada, but profits from Canadian sports viewers through its ownership position in the dominant local sports network.

The Criticism

No institution as influential as ESPN escapes criticism, and the network has accumulated its share over the decades.

The most persistent complaint concerns bias. ESPN doesn't merely broadcast games—it shapes narratives about athletes, teams, and leagues. The network's commentators express opinions, sometimes provocatively, and those opinions can influence how millions of viewers perceive sporting events. Critics from various ideological perspectives have accused ESPN of favoring certain teams, certain conferences, certain athletes. The network's defenders note that it's impossible to cover sports without making editorial choices, and that accusations of bias typically come from fans whose preferred teams aren't receiving what they consider adequate attention.

The gambling integration has drawn sharper criticism. When a network that covers sports also profits from betting on those sports, the potential for conflicts of interest multiplies. Will ESPN's commentators feel pressure to hype games that generate betting activity? Will coverage emphasize storylines that drive wagering? The network maintains that editorial independence remains intact, but skeptics note the financial incentives pointing in concerning directions.

What ESPN Built

Step back from the corporate maneuvering and the streaming wars, and consider what ESPN actually accomplished.

Before 1979, sports on television was a sometime thing. You watched what the networks chose to show, when they chose to show it. If you missed a game, you missed it—there was no way to catch highlights later, no analysis to help you understand what had happened.

ESPN created an always-on sports universe. Highlights available around the clock. Analysis and debate filling the spaces between games. Information about every sport, from the most popular leagues to obscure competitions most Americans had never heard of. The network trained viewers to think of sports not as occasional entertainment but as a constant companion, a subject worthy of continuous attention and discussion.

This transformation wasn't inevitable. Bill Rasmussen's original vision could have failed a dozen different ways. Getty Oil might not have invested. Anheuser-Busch might not have taken the advertising gamble. The NFL might have continued refusing to consider cable television. ABC might never have acquired the network and provided the resources needed to compete for premium content.

But it didn't fail. ESPN grew from a scrappy startup in Connecticut to a global media empire valued in the tens of billions of dollars. Along the way, it changed how Americans relate to sports, how athletes become celebrities, how leagues structure their broadcasting relationships, and how viewers consume athletic competition.

The story isn't over. Cord-cutting continues to threaten traditional cable economics. Streaming services compete fiercely for sports rights. New technologies will enable viewing experiences we can't yet imagine. ESPN will either adapt to these changes or eventually fade, like so many once-dominant media institutions before it.

But whatever happens next, the revolution that began with a fired hockey executive dreaming up an audacious idea in 1978 has already permanently altered the landscape. Sports media before ESPN and after ESPN are simply not the same thing. For better and worse, that's the legacy of what emerged from Bristol, Connecticut, nearly half a century ago.