RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — Bob Halloran, a former sportscaster for CBS Sports who later organized major boxing events as an executive in Las Vegas, has died. He was 87.
Halloran died of natural causes Sunday at his home in the desert city of Rancho Mirage located 120 miles east of Los Angeles, according to his nephew Michael Halloran.
Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Halloran began his sportscasting career after graduating in 1962 from the University of Miami, where he played on the golf team. He joined the CBS affiliate in Miami after interning there during college.
In 1970, CBS Sports in New York hired Halloran as a national sportscaster. He covered a variety of events, including golf and boxing. He frequently interviewed Muhammad Ali, whom he had met in Miami when the boxer was known as Cassius Clay.
Halloran left television in 1978 and moved to Las Vegas to join Caesar’s World as vice president of sports. He staged major bouts featuring Ali, Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns.
In 1988, Halloran assumed the same position at Mirage Sports. Two years later, he was promoted to president of sports. In 2002, he became director of sports at MGM Mirage. He continued to stage major fights featuring Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
Halloran left MGM Mirage in 2012 and continued to work as a sports consultant. He was inducted into the Florida Boxing Hall of Fame that same year.
In the 1990s, Halloran filed a lawsuit claiming that he, not TV producer Don Ohlmeyer, had conceived the concept for the Skins Game, a made-for-TV event featuring four of golf’s biggest names playing for big money over two days during the Thanksgiving weekend. The event was a ratings success from its debut in 1983.
“It was a pretty good settlement — that’s all I can tell you — but needless to say, I would have rather owned a piece of the Skins Game,” Halloran told the Los Angeles Times in 1996.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Sandra, in 2020. The couple had no children.
Halloran is no relation to the sportscaster by the same name who works for WCVB-TV in Boston.