Days after seemingly buying a lifeline, ESPN parent Disney, Fox and TNT Sports parent Warner Bros. Discovery pulled the plug on Venu Sports, the trio’s proposed streaming service, effective immediately.
“After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service,” the companies said Friday in a joint statement.
“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.”
On Monday, Disney’s ESPN acquired majority control of Fubo, which had won an injunction to block Venu from launching, accusing the companies of violating antitrust laws by reducing competition. The companies didn’t allow Fubo, a live-TV streaming service friendly to sports channels, to create a “skinny” bundle of such channels but aimed to do so themselves.
To effectively end the lawsuit, Disney agreed to acquire a majority stake in Fubo and merge it with Hulu + Live TV, Disney’s live-TV streamer. The agreement also allowed Fubo to create the skinny sports bundle it sought, and Fubo was to receive payments from the Venu partners.
But on Tuesday, satellite provider Dish’s parent, EchoStar, made public a letter it sent to the presiding judge of the Fubo-Venu trial, expressing concerns about the settlement. Satellite rival DirecTV did the same Thursday, and many in the industry wondered if another provider would bring its own suit. Venu already had drawn scrutiny in Washington.
Sports media and fans had criticized Venu for being simply a streaming version of cable, and an incomplete one at that. Though it was proposed as a way to address the fragmented market of sports channels, it didn’t include Paramount Global, which owns CBS, and NBCUniversal.
Had Venu gone forward, viewers still would have needed to supplement a subscription with others to watch, for example, a complete NFL Sunday and the full men’s NCAA basketball tournament.