History of the Sports Television Giant ESPN

 ESPN is a popular cable TV network about which we all have heard. It is so famous that now it has become a household name in every US family. If you like watching live sports events on ESPN and want to know about its history, you are at the right place. In this post, we will discuss ESPN’s history. 

Let’s start by taking a look at ESPN’s early roots.

Origins

Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, Inc., in short, ESPN is a sports broadcasting network. Bill Rasmussen launched ESPN in 1979, and today it is one of the most extensive cable networks in the USA. Bill Rasmussen was a New England sports announcer and founded ESPN to broadcast the hockey games of New England Whalers and other University of Connecticut’s sports events.

Steps towards becoming a giant sports network

Getty Oil Company purchased the tv network in the same year Bill launched it. It happened even before ESPN started broadcasting the sports events. Then, in 1984, Getty Oil Company sold it to ABC, Inc. After three years of buying ESPN, ABC, Inc. started broadcasting NFL (National Football League) games every Sunday night. It soon started competing with other cable networks in offering live sports events. In 1990, ESPN paid $400,000,000 (Four Hundred Million Dollars) to MLB (Major League Baseball) to broadcast 175 games per year for the upcoming four years. In the 24 hour transmission of ESPN, it was broadcasting games from the National Hockey League, College Basketball, Golf, Bowling, and Football.

Initially, ESPN started broadcasting for a limited period of time only. It was in 1980 when it started broadcasting for 24 hours a day. When ABC bought ESPN from Getty Oil Company, it retained 80% of its shares. The cookies and biscuits company purchased the remaining 20% shares. The cookies and biscuits company sold its stakes to the Hearst Corporation after acquiring them for around six years in 1990. In 1986, Capital Cities Communications Inc. acquired ABC and merged both the companies. Now, these two companies became one company, and its name was Capital Cities/ABC Inc.

Expanding Sports Coverage

ESPN was continuously expanding its sports coverage, and its growth was just unstoppable. ESPN and ABC Radio Network came together in 1991 to launch a radio station to expand their reach to as many sports lovers as possible. The name of the radio station was ESPN Radio. The launch of ESPN 2 occurred in 1993. The major purpose behind the launching of ESPN 2 was that there were alternative sports events that were not possible to cover with just one channel. Therefore, there was a need to get these sports events under ESPN, and hence they launched ESPN 2. The games that they covered on ESPN 2 were billiard, poker, and other extreme games.

Becoming International

With the launch of ESPN International, ESPN became even larger as it went global. Today, it serves sports fans in Asia, Latin America, Oceanis, Europe, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Africa. In 1996, Walt Disney Company acquired ESPN from Capital Cities/ABC Inc. Walt Disney is ESPN’s parent company even till today. In 1995, ESPN established ESPN Classic to broadcast its classic sports events from the past.

ESPN has a very large sports network today with other networks like ESPNews, ESPNU, ESPN Plus, ESPN UK, ESPN America, and ESPN on ABC. ESPNU is a sports channel designated for collegiate sporting events only. Not only live sports streaming and radio, but ESPN has its own world of publishing too. ESPN: The Magazine offers sports-related articles on various games to its subscribers. ESPN launched ESPN HD in 2003 and started broadcasting sporting events in High Definition quality.

Negative comments failed to stop ESPN’s success.

When ESPN was at the top of its game, many of its viewers started expressing concerns that it was a biased sports network and was trying to run away from the real sports. The comments related to the latter concern came because ESPN was covering events like National Spelling Bee and Poker.

But these comments failed to hinder the success and popularity of ESPN. It already had become the premiere satellite network and sports cable globally. ESPN’s early struggles turned it into such a big brand that a little bit of negativity had no effect on its impressive success.

Conclusion

We are guessing that you were only aware of ESPN’s channels and their popularity before reading this article, but now you know its history as well. There are always a lot of positives to take away from the history of a big brand that once started from scratch. We hope you enjoyed the article. Now, you can navigate through our website to learn more about ESPN.

Source :- History of the Sports Television Giant ESPN

Reference:

Britannica. 2021. ESPN, Inc television network. [Online]. [4 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/topic/ESPN-Inc

Mentalitch. 2021. History of ESPN. [Online]. [4 March 2021]. Available from: https://mentalitch.com/history-of-espn/

Wikipedia. 2021. History of ESPN. [Online]. [4 March 2021]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ESPN