Bill Rasmussen got canned from a PR gig at the World Hockey Association in 1979. That's the league nobody remembers because it folded. Got fired from the forgettable league. Started a cable sports network instead.
ESPN launched that same year. Rasmussen was 46. Built the thing with his son and a guy named Ed Eagan. They broadcast Australian rules football and professional wrestling at 3am because that's all they could afford. Thirty years later every sports bar in America had six screens showing NBA halftime shows and poker tournaments. Rasmussen made himself obsolete by succeeding.
He died Tuesday at 93 from Parkinson's complications. The disease had been grinding him down for years. No amount of stock options cures neurodegeneration. The man who changed how America watches sports spent his final years unable to control his own hands.
Retail traders will now spend the week analyzing Disney's stock price movement as if his death matters to Q3 earnings. It doesn't. Disney bought ESPN in 1996 for $19 billion as part of the Cap Cities/ABC deal. Rasmussen had already sold his stake by then. Took his money. Watched other people run the company.
The stock closed Tuesday at $127.43. Down twelve cents. Volume was normal. Nobody cared. The market priced in exactly zero dollars of grief.
Rasmussen's entire legacy is that he convinced people to pay monthly fees to watch commercials between football games. Revolutionary business model. Pure genius. Changed entertainment forever. He got rich and lived to 93.
The man built an empire because he got fired from a job that doesn't exist anymore at a league that doesn't exist anymore. Perfect career arc. Started with failure, ended with Parkinson's, made billions for Disney shareholders in between.
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