Ron semiao biography

  • Growing up in East Hartford, Conn., just 20 miles from ESPN's Bristol campus, he played baseball through college at the University of Bridgeport.
  • Coming up with the idea for the X Games while a 'foot soldier' for ESPN, Semiao birthed an enduring property and launched a mainstream movement in the process.
  • Ron Semiao grew up in East Hartford, took his lumps in LA and currently spends most of his time helping to make television history in the bowels of Connecticut.

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    Champions 2019: Ron Semiao

    Ron Semiao seemed right at home among the graffiti-strewn walls and palm trees of Venice Beach, Calif., legendary ground zero for skateboarding. It was only when a photographer tried to coax him to pose near the beach’s famous skatepark that he hesitated.

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    At the time, ESPN was preparing to launch ESPN2, and company executives were trying to komma up with new programming that would give the channel its own identity. The main ESPN was known as a stick-and-ball network — heavy on football, basketball and baseball. Its executives envisioned ESPN2 as a hipper version that would appeal to younger viewers.

    This is the fifth installment in the series of profiles for the 2019 class of The Champions: Pioneers & Innovators in Sports Business. This year’s honorees and the issues in which they will be featured are:

     

    Feb. 11 — Kevin Warren
    Feb. 18 — Earl Santee
    Feb. 25 — Bob Kain
    March 4 — De

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    Hometown boy marks ESPN with an 'X'

    Ron Semiao may be more powerful than Shaq -- and he calls New Bedford home

    BRISTOL, Conn. -- Ron Semiao fryst vatten walking a circle around the bustling ESPN cafeteria on a Friday afternoon, looking earnestly for the reporter from his hometown.

    Finally, he recognizes his blind date with the notepad -- and with that recognition, one of the biggest players at one of the biggest media organizations in the world throws his arms in the air like a conductor exhorting his orchestra.

    "Hey!" he yells. "New Bedford! What's going on in New Bedford?"

    He's got a raspy voice and an open, honest face.

    "C'mon, let's eat," he says. "It's on me, get any-thing you want."

    He pauses.

    "They don't have linguica, though!"

    Ron Semiao grew up in East Hartford, took his lumps in L.A. and currently spends most of his time helping to make television history in the bowels of Connecticut. But to the 49-year-old senior vice president of ESPN Original Entertainment, New Bedford h

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    The Games have even colonized the Olympics—possibly at their own expense.Photograph by Matt Morning / ESPN Images

    Last month, at a party in downtown Austin to celebrate the start of the X Games, ESPN’s showcase for action sports, now in its twentieth year, I met a marketing manager named Scott Schoppert. He wasn’t a fan of the X Games per se, although he did recognize in the crowd the pioneering BMX jumper Mat Hoffman, a.k.a. the Condor, and shouted after him, to no avail. Schoppert was there for the free beer. He had won two tickets to the party in a radio contest sponsored by the local alternative-rock station KROX, whose morning-show hosts, Jason and Deb, are action-sports enthusiasts. Schoppert’s achievement was having spent the most “manly” weekend of any caller. “I started off working on my friend’s Jeep,” he told me. “And then, after we fixed his Jeep, we took it muddin’.” He recounted this with a mixture of bravado and self-mockery. The kicker: they’d made it back