On September 7, 1979, at precisely 7 p.m. EST, tv sports activities historical past was made when ESPN formally launched its first broadcast. Roughly 30,000 viewers tuned in to see the brand-new 24-hour sports activities community, highlighted by the premiere of SportsCenter with anchors Lee Leonard and George Grande.
Leonard welcomed the viewers with a line that completely set the tone for what ESPN would grow to be: “If you happen to love sports activities…if you happen to actually love sports activities, you’ll assume you’ve died and gone to sports activities heaven.” Grande then delivered the primary rating ever introduced on the community — Chris Evert’s victory over Billie Jean King on the U.S. Open.
That first SportsCenter ran for less than half-hour, that includes largely videotaped highlights. Instantly after, ESPN rolled out a slow-pitch softball sport, together with area of interest programming like wrestling and school soccer, laying the groundwork for the community’s “one thing for each sports activities fan” method.
Nonetheless, ESPN’s early years had been something however simple. The community confronted main monetary struggles and teetered on the point of collapse. A turning level got here in 1980, when Anheuser-Busch govt Michael Roarty satisfied the beer big to speculate $1 million into ESPN. A yr later, the corporate added one other $5 million to maintain the sports activities experiment afloat. Wanting again in a 1994 interview with the St. Louis Submit-Dispatch, Roarty known as the choice a no brainer: “We gave them $1 million that first yr. And if we hadn’t, they’d have gone underneath… I believed the beer drinker was a sports activities lover… The following yr, we gave them $5 million. I believe it turned out to be the very best funding we ever made.”
That early lifeline not solely stored ESPN alive, but in addition set the stage for the community to revolutionize sports activities media. From humble beginnings with 30,000 viewers to right now’s international attain of thousands and thousands throughout a number of platforms, ESPN’s affect on how followers devour sports activities is simple. And it began 46 years in the past with a half-hour of highlights on SportsCenter.
