An open book

Stu Evey isn’t as busy as he used to be, 25 years ago. When he was an executive vice president at Getty Oil in Los Angeles, Evey managed numerous deals and dozens of projects.

One of those projects, in fact, turned out to be a gusher. Evey was the executive at Getty who bankrolled the launch of ESPN, the country’s first, and now foremost, cable TV all-sports network. He remained chairman of ESPN until 1984, when Getty Oil sold all of its assets, including ESPN, to Texaco. Today, the 72-year-old Evey is preparing for the release of his book that details how ESPN took shape and the role he played in its formation.

He’s slowed down, but he still has an unquenchable, old-school ambition to strike business deals and help hatch ideas. He’s trying hard to enjoy a low profile in Spokane, his hometown, but with limited success: Most of the time, Evey is hunting for the next great deal.

“I’m not retired,” Evey insists. “I’m just actively unemployed.”

As he sits in his basement home office, next to a wall of memorabilia from his career at Getty and his four years as chairman of ESPN, Evey says he’s not as busy as he’d like to be.

“I don’t like it that I’m not doing more. I’d like to be involved with companies with some degree of success, companies that are growing or want to expand.”

He’s only involved with one corporate board, Vadium, a technology company in Seattle.

“I’ve been around here for nine years and I haven’t been invited to serve on a board in town,” Evey complained. “Having my experience would be of value for somebody. I’ve made some big deals in my career.”

Starting in July, he’ll be busier as he promotes his tell-all account, titled “ESPN: The No-Holds-Barred Story of Power, Ego, Money, and Vision That Transformed a Culture.”

Corey Brock, a Spokane attorney who’s worked with Evey, said Spokane may never offer Evey a chance to use his contacts and skills to maximum effect.

“He has an incredible number of contacts still,” Brock said. But Spokane is populated with many small or struggling start-up companies, and those are not the clients Evey can help, he said. “Stu could open a lot of doors for the right kind of company. But I think he’s better at helping later-stage companies than trying to help start-up companies get going.”

Since moving here from Palm Desert, Calif., nine years ago, Evey has had a handful of consulting jobs. His most successful Spokane deal was a yearlong project working for Cyan Inc., the north Spokane company that designed the interactive games Myst, Riven and Uru.

Evey said that job four years ago “got the juices flowing again. It was fun that I could take advantage of my past contacts.”

In 2000, privately held, family-owned Cyan was looking for money to push forward its largest project ever. That new game — released last year as Uru: Ages Beyond Myst — would take advantage of broadband Internet connections, creating a more complex and detailed game experience.

Rand Miller, Cyan’s president, tracked down Evey and hired him to make contacts in the entertainment and media industry.

“It’s amazing how many names of people in the industry he knew,” Miller said. “He’s not out of touch. He’s involved with a lot of people who were making decisions in companies we wanted to talk with.”

Evey said he was able to line up solid investors who were willing to put significant cash behind Cyan. For a period of time, for example, Time Warner Corp. executives were exploring the idea of developing cable-TV content based around Cyan’s Myst-Riven-Uru products.

But Miller and his colleagues balked, resisting the idea of giving up too much ownership to outside investors.

“I guess it was frustrating for me,” Evey said, “since they didn’t want to dip their toes in the water.”

Miller admits he gained a lot from talking with Evey about how the ESPN success came about. Evey’s experience there was similar to Cyan’s, Miller said.

“We were doing the same thing, developing content ahead of its time. It was valuable to hear Stu describe how you go into meetings and work with people and describe your goals and get results,” he said.

Evey’s book and his frank comments about the formation of ESPN leave no doubt that he played a role in its creation. But he’s careful to not take a lot of the credit.

He had grown up in Spokane, attended the University of Washington, then joined the Army. After serving in Germany, he went to California and eventually signed on as an assistant to George Getty, the son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.

In the 1970s Evey became vice president of all non-oil operations for Getty Oil at the time. Up until then, his work was focused on managing agribusiness interests, lumber operations, and hotels around the world.

When some guys from Connecticut visited him in early 1979, Evey said he was desperately in need of a new professional challenge. ESPN provided that opportunity.

“No one knew much about satellites and cable TV at the time,” he said.

“Did I know that ESPN was going to be big? Absolutely not.

“Did I have the vision that it would become what it is? Hell, no.”

But Evey knew it didn’t hurt to look the idea over closely; he used several Getty financial experts to analyze the market and assess what could come from investing $12 million in the new venture. After its launch, ESPN grabbed immediate media attention, attracting plenty of publicity, even while it was losing millions of dollars per year, Evey said.

His role at ESPN and Getty ended in 1984, when Texaco bought Getty Oil. Texaco sold off its stake in ESPN to ABC-TV. Today, Disney Corp. owns 80 percent of ESPN, while Hearst Corp. owns the rest.

Evey was married, the father of two daughters, and still addicted to the rush of making deals and chasing the next big thing.

He acknowledged it was also a time of strife and neglect of his personal life. In 1985 he checked himself into the Betty Ford Clinic to shake an addiction to alcohol. He’s been sober ever since, an accomplishment he regards as important as playing midwife to ESPN.

He and his first wife divorced in 1986. Evey moved to Palm Desert and tried to lighten up. But he would wake up at 5 a.m. and start phoning people on the East Coast, discussing business deals, he said.

Nine years ago, he decided to move to Spokane to slow down and regain personal balance. “I basically ran out of gas,” he said. Over time, his influence and connections gradually waned, Evey conceded.

“People who make deals drive the lunch agenda in L.A.,” he said. “Once you’re out of the flow, you can only count on the courtesy of old pals for so long.”

In 1995 he married his current wife, Mary Dailey, in Spokane. They travel part of the year and stay active in the community. One of their main commitments, Evey said, is helping people dealing with alcoholism. “We make interventions. We want to make sure we help people get through difficult times.”

Evey said he’s too old to try to start a new business. What he’s ready to offer, he said, is the seasoned veteran’s perspective on management and strategies: “You’ve sometimes got to see something and not be afraid to take a risk.”

Evey hasn’t been widely known in Spokane for his modesty, but he candidly describes himself as a “jack of all trades, master of none.”

“I am good at finding good people to do what needs to be done. I hired great people and made sure they had the tools to work with. That’s the key thing. When you give people the right incentives, good things happen.”