The founder of ESPN, Bill Rasmussen, has died at the age of 93 after battling with Parkinson’s disease for over a decade.
ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro, said in a statement on Tuesday that Rasmussen died at his Florida home from the effects of Parkinson’s disease.
“Bill was a remarkable man — a visionary and an innovator who conceived the idea of a network entirely devoted to sports,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement. “Quite simply, none of us would be here today if it wasn’t for Bill’s passion and all the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit he put into building ESPN in the late 1970s — key aspects of our company culture that still carry on to this day.”
Rasmussen, co- founded ESPN, an American basic cable sports broadcasting network in 1979 with his son Scott as the world’s first 24-hour sports television network.
Rasmussen revealed in 2019 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a degenerative disease in 2014.
