ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is a U.S. television station that broadcasts exclusively sports programs around the clock. ESPN was founded in 1979 and broadcasts mainly from its own studios in Bristol (Connecticut) and reaches 90 million households (as of summer 2005) in the USA. The station also has offices in New York, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Charlotte and Los Angeles. The news program SportsCenter has been broadcast since the station was founded.
ESPN was originally intended to be an alternative to the sports coverage of traditional channels and the sports pages of daily newspapers. The station was created by Bill Rasmussen, a reporter from NBC partner WWLP. They started in a very manageable framework and often had to resort to less common sports (“Tractor Pull”, Australian Rules Football or the United States Football League were on offer). The name of the channel was originally ESP (Entertainment and Sports Programming), but was changed before the launch. ESPN began broadcasting Sportscenter’s first programme on 7 September 1979. Before the launch, Getty Oil bought a majority stake in the company.
The turning point finally came in 1987, when ESPN succeeded in concluding a contract with the NFL that regulated the broadcasting of football matches on Sunday nights. ESPN quickly became a powerful media empire from a marginalized cable TV station.
ESPN was initially part of a joint venture between Getty Oil Company (now acquired by Texaco) and Nabisco. Since 2005, the entire ESPN broadcasting family has been 80 percent owned by ABC (American Broadcasting Company, itself owned by The Walt Disney Company). The remaining 20 percent is held by Hearst Corporation.
In addition, there are now subsidiaries of ESPN, such as ESPN2, ESPN3 (online sports offering, including the German Soccer League), ESPN News, ESPN HD (broadcasting the normal program in High Definition), ESPN Classic (formerly Classic Sports Network), ESPNU (specialized in college sports), ESPN Radio (several medium-wave sports radio stations in the U.S. are run under this name and some broadcast joint program) and ESPN The Magazine. ESPN’s best known sports news programme is “SportsCenter”, other popular programmes include Monday Night Football, which has been part of ESPN’s programme since 2006, and the show College GameDay, which has existed since 1987.
In early 2007, ESPN acquired the European US sports channel NASN for an estimated 90 million euros, which was then renamed ESPN America in February 2009. The channel was discontinued on August 1, 2013.
The company’s slogan is “The Worldwide Leader in Sports”.
Boxing Awards
ESPN awards the Boxer of the Year and the Boxer of the Decade, among others. The prize for the Boxer of the Decade has only been awarded once so far, in 2009 it was awarded to the Philippine Manny Pacquiao.