A $9,000 credit card advance and an idea many cable operators doubted helped set ESPN in motion. Bill Rasmussen, the broadcaster and entrepreneur who co-founded the around-the-clock sports network with his son Scott, died at his Florida home on August 18, 2026, according to The Associated Press. He was 93.

Rasmussen was born in Chicago in 1932 and grew up on the city's South Side. He studied economics and history at DePauw University, graduating in 1954, served in the United States Air Force and earned an MBA from Rutgers University in 1960. The business training led first to an advertising services company, but broadcasting became the work that held him.

By the early 1960s, he was working in radio in Amherst, Massachusetts. He moved to WWLP-TV in Springfield in 1965, filling roles that included sports director, news director and evening news anchor. In 1974, he joined the World Hockey Association's New England Whalers in Hartford as communications director.

The turning point arrived when the Whalers dismissed their front office after the 1977-78 season. Out of that lost job came a sustained pursuit. Rasmussen and Scott began shaping the idea for a sports cable channel during a Connecticut traffic jam. The initial concept focused on the state's teams, but satellite distribution opened a national possibility. ESPN Press Room records the father and son imagining the service on Interstate 84 while many around them doubted a channel could fill every hour with sports.

They incorporated the venture on July 14, 1978. Over the next 14 months, the Rasmussens secured satellite capacity, programming rights from the NCAA, advertising commitments and financial backing from Getty Oil. They hired a staff and prepared a production base in Bristol, Connecticut, where construction was still underway when the signal went live. Rasmussen's official biography traces that sprint from an improvised beginning to a national launch.

At 7 p.m. Eastern time on September 7, 1979, ESPN began broadcasting. George Grande welcomed the audience to the first SportsCenter, and the first live event was a slow-pitch softball game between the Kentucky Bourbons and the Milwaukee Schlitz. Rasmussen later described waiting for proof that the signal had found an audience: "We waited for the phone to ring for somebody to say they were watching. We didn't get any phone calls."

That quiet first response did not measure what the idea would become. A continuous sports network made room for games outside the traditional weekend schedule, created a daily home for scores and highlights, and gave competitions beyond the major broadcast networks regular television space. SportsCenter became the channel's signature program and a durable expression of Rasmussen's belief that sports could sustain a network of their own.

Rasmussen's formal time at ESPN was brief. He and Scott departed in 1980 after Getty Oil took majority control. Nearly two decades later, ESPN invited him back for its 20th anniversary, and he again appeared at company events and spoke about the network's beginnings.

Recognition continued late in his life. DePauw inducted him into its Media Wall of Fame, and in 2025 the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame honored him as an emeritus inductee. Its announcement credited him with changing the relationship between sports and television and with creating the SportsCenter brand.

Rasmussen's wife of 56 years, Lois, died in 2011. His survivors included their sons Scott and Glenn, their daughter Lynn Van Hollebeke, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The evidence of Rasmussen's singular bet remains visible in ESPN's Bristol studios, in the SportsCenter name and in the expectation that a fan can find sports on television at any hour. What began after a hockey job ended became a permanent part of how games, scores and stories reach an audience.