How ESPN Made Sports and Entertainment Mix
As he geared up to open this week’s Sportico and Variety Sports and Entertainment Summit in L.A., Sportico editor-in-chief Scott Soshnick had a question: Why does ESPN start with the letter ‘E’ and not ‘S’—given what it’s the Worldwide Leader in?
So he went to the source: ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen. And he asked.
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Here’s Rasmussen’s reply, lightly edited for style, which provides a lesson in how all great sports industry companies were, at the beginning, just small ventures with a big idea and a willingness to adapt on the fly.
Scott,
No mystery concerning the “S” as the first letter. Naturally we thought Sports should be the first word, but we discovered that a company in Tulsa, Okla., had already incorporated the “Satellite Programming Network.” Back to the drawing board for us!
The “E” first was pure coincidence. An advertising campaign for a Connecticut natural gas company had just launched a promotion for an “Energy Savings Program” with a very clever animated video of a spinning image of the earth with the letters ESP rotating around it. I called the ad agency for the company and asked if we could use their video with a different audio. The partner with whom I spoke was an avid golfer and sports fan.
“If I can secure the rights to use the ad agency’s video, I’d love to come work for you.”
The very next morning he called back and said, “When do I start?”
We came up with the “E” first (instead of “S”) because we wanted to use the video! No nationwide contest or deep thought involved—somebody simply said, sports are entertaining. Why not “ESPN: The Entertainment and Sports Network?” The rest is history!!!!
You can read about more recent history, which was made this week at the first-ever Sportico and Variety summit, here. And if you want to know more about Bill Rasmussen, you can read his memoir, here.
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