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Television

Warner, Fox, Disney To Launch Streaming Sports Joint Venture (variety.com) 31

Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney are planning to launch a new streaming joint venture that will combine all their sports programming "under a single broadband roof," reports Variety. The move "will put content from ESPN, TNT and Fox Sports on a new standalone app and, in the process, likely shake up the world of TV sports." From the report: The three media giants are slated to launch the new service in the fall. Subscribers would get access to linear sports networks including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV and ESPN+, as well as hundreds of hours from the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL and many top college divisions. Pricing will be announced at a later date.

Each company would own one third of the new outlet and license their sports content to it on a non-exclusive basis. The service would have a new brand and an independent management team. The concept surfaces as traditional media companies are grappling with the migration of sports -- the last TV format that generates steady crowds and sustained ratings -- to streaming venues.

The concentration of top sports under one roof would be significant. Between them, ESPN and Warner have most rights to the NHL and the NBA, while Fox, Warner and ESPN control at present the majority of rights to Major League Baseball. Only the NFL would enjoy a large presence with entities that are not a part of the joint venture, with "Sunday Night Football" at NBCUniversal, "Thursday Night Football" at Amazon and a Sunday afternoon game at CBS.

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Warner, Fox, Disney To Launch Streaming Sports Joint Venture

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  • Pay $100/month for the one channel you care about, and get all the other ones you DON'T want for free!
  • MONOPOLY!

    How can this pass even the barest scrutiny?

    • Sports team choose the outlets that broadcast their games etc. in one of several ways. Some form or join leagues that negotiate and manage the rights for them. Others negotiate directly. Some team owners also own media outlets. Some deals are for multiple years, some not very long at all. Some deals restrict over the air broadcasting, others leave OTA rights out.

      Monopoly? Sure, it looks like a monopoly, but the idea of multiple outlets showing the same games at the same time is fairly unusual, though when i

      • See, to me the only sports I am interested in, is college football season.

        Once that is over, I'm pretty much good on sports for the year.

        I can only think of 2 exceptions...March Madness for college basketball, and that's on the regular networks.

        And when the college World Series in baseball fires up, if any of the teams I care for are in, I"ll watch some of that.

        But that's about it.

        • Oh yeah, March Madness, which is all the college basketball to watch. And which is often available OTA.

          You should watch the college softball WS, them players can play!

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @05:20PM (#64220488)

    now end the forced ESPN into basic cable plans!

    Also NFL force peacock to put the peacock only NFL games on directv commercial service like how the amazon games are.

    directv commercial has the ESPN+ only NHL games and just about all steaming only games from the NBA, MLB, NHL games.

  • by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @05:20PM (#64220490)
    Seriously? Do these executypes even understand a typical sports fan? (I know, dumb question) Is there really a market for "I want to watch all the teams from all of the sports" type of programming? Most normal people watch one or two sports, and follow one or two teams. As a Twins fan, I'm not going to turn on a Padres game unless the Twins are playing there. Why would I want to pay some guaranteed-to-be-obscene amount of money for a shitload of cruft that I'll never turn on? How hard of a concept is "The only thing I want is to be able to watch every one of my team's games"?
    • Not enough details but I would hope (and this probably wont be the case) that this is priced in a lot of tiers, to where you can buy say the viewing season for an individual team, maybe even now without weird blackout dates, or a couple teams, or like a "city package", or a league if you only care about one sport, maybe I just want to be able to watch the playoff season of something, all the way up to "I want to watch all the teams from all of the sports" because there are people who would in fact pay for s

    • by porges ( 58715 )

      Sometimes the answer to "who wants to see all those games?" is "gamblers", and it's only getting more widespread.

    • Seriously? Do these executypes even understand a typical sports fan? (I know, dumb question) Is there really a market for "I want to watch all the teams from all of the sports" type of programming? Most normal people watch one or two sports, and follow one or two teams. As a Twins fan, I'm not going to turn on a Padres game unless the Twins are playing there. Why would I want to pay some guaranteed-to-be-obscene amount of money for a shitload of cruft that I'll never turn on? How hard of a concept is "The only thing I want is to be able to watch every one of my team's games"?

      You're worried (probably rightly) about billing... which is a different topic.

      This is a good thing. This is the way it should be: one clearing house for all the stuff. One place where you go to get whatever you want. Like a supermarket, for streaming.

      We shouldn't have to give our payment details to ten different organizations, making the odds of our data being compromised ten times as likely.

      Now, once this is all amalgamated, it should totally be pay-for-what-you-watch. They can track it. They sh

      • Yeah as a college football fan it is a crap shoot about whether the game will be on the antenna, an app I can get a free trial for, or if it'll just be so complicated I don't bother watching at all that week. It was easier with cable but also ended up with a lot more out of pocket and sports aren't interesting enough to me to sign back up for paid TV. I have a D+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle for 'free' via my cell provider and ESPN+ has had something I wanted to watch that wasn't blacked out exactly once. If this s
    • I do know a few people who would watch anything sports, when they want to kill time switch on a sports channel, just as others do with music or shows.

  • by farble1670 ( 803356 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @05:49PM (#64220566)

    I guess cord cutting meant going from $200 / month to the cable company to $50 month to an ISP, and $50 / month to 3+ media conglomerates.

    Guaranteed, this offering is $50+ a month and will have ads.

  • Their solution to people cancelling their cable subscription..... is to sell them a different subscription. Yeah, that'll work.

  • Is Formula 1

    Unfortunately ESPN have the rights to that in the USA

    • For what it's worth, you can subscribe to F1TV for around $11/month or around $85/year. It is more expensive than the ESPN+ subscription (depending on how you get it), but you get access to some features ESPN+ can't give you. I had the F1TV subscription for years and liked to have my laptop screen showing the lap times, laps on current tire, when the last pit was, and some other data. You could also get the in-car radio for each driver. It's a way to get out of the ESPN+ subscription and you get a lot m
  • by BishopBerkeley ( 734647 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @07:18PM (#64220760) Journal
    Tubi and Pluto are free and make money through ads, like linear TV does. Companies like The Trade Desk are making this possible. The only reason these asswipes want to charge money is because people think they need to subscribe to a streaming service. Alternately, the asswipes who own the leagues are charging absurd licensing fees, so the networks need to charge streaming fees in addition to the ads they run to be profitable. People should insist on the old linear ad-supported TV model. This has gotten completely out of hand. People simply need to say no. In the end, it's just sports, and not worth this much expense.

    Says the guy who pays $240 a year to have F1 and MotoGP subscriptions.
    • I cut the cable a while back and really the only thing I've missed is sports. I subscribed to MLB TV and League Pass because I was either out of market traveling or living out of market, and I use those a lot. Fucking Sunday ticket has always been so overpriced that I do not understand how or why people buy it.
      • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        Fucking Sunday ticket has always been so overpriced that I do not understand how or why people buy it.

        Ugh, no kidding. Now, with the way things are going in the NFL, even if you have Sunday Ticket you're going to miss at least 3 games because they are on a Monday, Thursday, or Saturday. (Unless you happen to subscribe to those services too.) I have a broadcast antenna, that gets me most of the way their. It's the high seas for the rest of it. Until these teams and leagues start becoming less hostile to their fans, fuck 'em.

      • Yes, clearly they are realizing that cord cutters miss sports the most, and I am in that group along with you. Nevertheless, they can make plenty of money just through ad revenues if they have enough viewers. People have been cowed into thinking they have to pay the subscriber fees, and the majors are cashing in. People need to be creative. For the price of all these things one could be traveling to a hell of a nice destination once a year.
  • package for a measly added extra $30+ bucks a month.
  • by SmaryJerry ( 2759091 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @07:36PM (#64220804)
    Wasn't Fox Sports required to be sold off by Disney so they wouldn't have a monopoly on sports channels. Well now they are partnered with a company that includes that channel and can again make a sports channel monopoly. Funny how that works.
  • ... And I predict a similar fate for this service as what happened to Hulu.

  • No one watches television anymore . They're all over on social media
  • From https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]

    a market situation in which each of a few producers affects but does not control the market

  • As a cord cutter for 15+ years, I learned how to watch anything sports related for free. I cut the chain off my neck aka wallet. Sports is the last "stranglehold" that they have on pay cable subscription !! My grown kids will never buy a cable subscription !

"I'm a mean green mother from outer space" -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors

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