If You Can’t Beat ’em
February 7, 2025
The biggest fight yet over sports streaming has ended. Disney, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery have ended plans for the Venu sports streaming app. First announced last February, Venu was slated to shake up the sports distribution ecosystem, offering a one-stop subscription service streaming ESPN, ABC, Fox and TNT sports content, accounting for 50% of all U.S. sports media rights, and about 60% of all nationally broadcast U.S. sports rights.
The concept rattled some government officials, in addition to satellite TV distributors DirecTV and Dish and online sports streaming platform FuboTV, among others. Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit. Disney and the other studios then settled with Fubo this month, agreeing to pay Fubo $220 million. While that agreement ended the litigation, Dish and DirecTV remained unsatisfied with the Venu concept. Rather than risk future litigation surrounding bundling, the JV was scrapped.
Under the new arrangement, Disney acquires a 70% stake in Fubo and will merge it with Hulu + Live TV.
Meanwhile, satellite TV operator DirecTV is launching a new streaming bundle dubbed “MySports” giving subscribers a sports-centric content package with access to 40 sports and broadcast channels, priced at an introductory $49.99 monthly fee for the first 90 days ($69.99 a month thereafter).
So it isn’t really the end of a sports bundle. The idea behind Venu didn’t necessarily die; the players either copied or bought their way into the concept.