Venu Sports Dissolves Before Launching

A venture that would have collectively brought together three streaming services has decided to discontinue the collaboration.

Venu Sports, which brought together ESPN, FOX, and Warner Bros. Discovery in a joint sports venture will not “move forward” with plans to do so. A joint statement from the three entities was released announcing the decision.

“After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service. In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels. We are proud of the work that has been done on Venu to date and grateful to the Venu staff, whom we will support through this transition period.”

The Hollywood Reporter reported that early in 2024, the three companies announced that they would launch the collaborative streaming service Venu Sports with anticipation of launching it before the NFL season. The plan was to provide a litany of sports channels attributed to the brands involved. It would have operated like a vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor) where each streaming service would showcase the sports from their respective channels.

Shortly after the announcement, sports-focused streaming service Fubo filed a lawsuit against Venu Sports, accusing the companies of violating antitrust rules.

Venu made plans to launch the service at a monthly price point of $42.99 per month. But, before they were able to, U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett issued an injunction to stop the launch pending a trial.

Yet, on Jan. 6, a surprise deal was announced by Disney signifying that the company is merging Hulu and Live TV with Fubo. This creates the second-biggest streaming MVPD after YouTube TV.  Although Disney would be the majority owner, it will be run by Fubo’s executive team. With this agreement, Fubo stated it would end the antitrust case filed against the aforementioned companies.

According to Reuters, although Fubo withdrew the lawsuit, two other parties, EchoStar (Dish)  and DirecTV stepped in by sending letters to the federal district court judge on Jan. 10 to argue that Fubo’s withdrawing of the lawsuit still doesn’t solve the antitrust issues the former company brought to light.

Leave a Reply

Categories

Discover more from The Industry Cosign

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading