R.I.P.: Stuart Evey, A Founding Force at ESPN

Stuart Evey

Stuart Evey, who as an executive for Getty Oil recommended that the company invest in the start-up that became ESPN and then took an active role in its management for five years, died on Dec. 8 in Spokane, Wash.

He was 84, according to The NYTimes.

Evey, who oversaw Getty’s non-petroleum businesses, was asked in late 1978 to evaluate a plan for an all-sports network. In those early days of cable programming, there were few channels, let alone any that televised sports 24 hours a day, as Bill Rasmussen, a former hockey team executive, was proposing.

Seven other companies had rejected Rasmussen’s pitch, and he was running out of money.

“Bill came to my office very disgruntled because he knew, in his mind apparently, that there’s no way an oil company would ever be interested in what he had in mind,” Evey old the authors James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales for the book “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN” (2011).

Rather than spurn Rasmussen, Evey was intrigued. But there was not much dependable information about the nascent cable industry to analyze. Networks like CNN and MTV had not yet started. And television executives like Roone Arledge, who had revolutionized sports coverage at ABC, told Evey that an operation like ESPN had little chance of succeeding.

“Stu was skeptical, and he was constantly trying to figure out what might go wrong,” Rasmussen said in a telephone interview. “But he was a sports enthusiast, and it would be a feather in his cap if it turned out well.”

Evey persuaded the Getty board to invest $10 million in ESPN for an 85 percent stake, with Mr. Rasmussen and his family owning the rest. It was a critical investment. The network went on the air on Sept. 7, 1979, and eventually became the largest force in sports media.