Founding ESPN

The Presidents' Forum of Philadelphia
June 10, 2009

Bill Rasmussen
Founder & CEO
College Fanz Sports Network

Speaker Biography:
Bill Rasmussen and his team launched College Fanz Sports Network 28 years to the day after launching his most famous earlier creation, ESPN.

On September 7, 2007, College Fanz Sports Network went live, and has become the world's largest online college sports community, with students, alumni, and other fans of college sports.

College Fanz boasts over 22,000 web pages devoted to every team at the more than 1,450 colleges and universities throughout the United States competing in over 225,000 NCAA and NAIA athletic events. Fanz can post videos, photographs, and comment on their favorite teams and schools, participate in contests, and communicate with other fans in a compelling and ever-growing social network.

Rasmussen's latest innovation, College Fanz, is changing the way college sports news and information is delivered to fans worldwide, just as his earlier creation, ESPN, changed the way people watched television.

Rasmussen founded 'The Worldwide Leader in Sports' in 1979. He has been called 'The Father of Cable Sports' by USA Today (September 1994).

Rasmussen's entrepreneurial daring led to the world's first 24-hour cable television network, ESPN, where he pioneered such innovations as 'SportsCenter,' wall-to-wall coverage of NCAA regular season and 'March Madness' basketball, and NFL draft coverage. He broke the advertising barrier to cable television by signing Anheuser Busch to the largest cable TV advertising contract ever.

Rasmussen has served as a consultant to the Big Ten Conference, and several of the conference's individual member institutions, on television matters. He has also been a consultant with numerous other startup media and Internet companies. His Internet ventures include serving as Chairman of the Attitude Network, home of the highly successful Happy Puppy and Games Domain sites; and as Chairman of SportsatHome, a sports-themed game site that offered an array of virtual sports stadiums and games to play online within each of the stadiums.

After an earlier successful entrepreneurial venture in the advertising business, Rasmussen's career in the media began at WTTT radio in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1962. In 1965, he moved to WW LP-TV, Springfield, where he spent eight years as Sports Director and two years as News Director. During these years, he handled numerous football, basketball, baseball and hockey play-by-play assignments on both radio and television.

In 1974, he left Springfield to join hockey's New England Whalers as Communications Director. At the conclusion of the 1977-78 World Hockey Association season, Rasmussen
was fired by the Whalers. Thus began the pursuit of the ESPN dream, incorporating the fledgling network on July 14, 1978. Fourteen months later, at 7 p.m. on September 7, 1979,
Rasmussen's dream, ESPN, became reality.

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