Media Companies Scrap Venu Sports Before It Ever Launches

ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery announced today that it will not launch the Venu live sports streaming service. "After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service," the companies said 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." The Verge reports: ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery first announced Venu last year, and it was supposed to launch in the fall of 2024. The service would've given viewers access to a swath of live games from the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, and more from several linear channels, including ESPN, ABC, Fox, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, TNT, and others.

But then Venu hit a legal roadblock: an antitrust lawsuit from the live TV streaming service Fubo, accusing the trio of engaging in "a years-long campaign to block Fubo's innovative sports-first streaming business" due to restrictive sports licensing agreements. Lawmakers also asked regulators to investigate Venu and its potential to become a monopoly in televised sports.

Make more money as part of a cable bundle

[ardmhacha]

They have clearly realized that they will make a lot more money as part of a cable bundle that 10s of millions of people buy (however unwillingly) rather than a stand alone sports package that many fewer would buy.

Re:

[Jason Earl]

i used to work for a streaming service. It is actually the other way around. The part that people actually pay for is sports. If sports fans could just pay for the sports content that they actually want then they would stop subsidizing the entire television industry.

To give you an example. Amazon pays something like $1 billion a year to get access to the Thursday night football games. That probably seems like big money, but it is a quarter of what Apple is spending on content. And Amazon regularly g

ESPN needs to be on it's own and forced into all k

[Joe_Dragon]

ESPN needs to be on it's own and forced into all kinds of other packages

Re:

[Jason Earl]

The streaming companies would love this. Disney forces cable and streaming companies to pay ridiculous prices for their other channels so that they can have access to ESPN and ABC Sports. That's the reason that Sling has both and Orange and a Blue package. Sling Orange is basically the cheapest way to get the regular ESPN channels. it is basically a package specifically carved out for Disney. You can either get 9 ESPN packages, or you can get 43 other channels.

But Disney owns all these services.

[Fly Swatter]

They own ESPN, ABC, and Fubo... something else is going on here, there is no way they care about being a monopoly - that is exactly what Disney would want.

Re:

[sacrilicious]

Although that acquisition was just announced a few days ago... but yeah, you'd think they'd already have quelled the dissent.

The streaming service would kill standard models.

[upuv]

If all US sports were to be channelled into a single streaming service it would effectively kill off all other provider channels almost instantly.

But as other people have flagged it would kill cable bundles almost overnight. Addon on Sports channels basically prop up basic cable TV packages. Sports are what really keep the big players in the US TV game afloat these days. Most of the non-sport TV watchers have long since migrated to online streaming service and cut the cable. Sports is in my opinion the

\o/

[easyTree]

"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."

Pure Weasel.

It's all Zaslav's fault

[CommunityMember]

With the loss of the NBA, WBD no longer has anything (substantial) to offer to Venu. That was a self inflected (and avoidable) terminal wound that Zaslav orchestrated . Disney (and to a lesser extend Fox) will now try to determine a path forward to move to DTC sports offerings. Disney has already stated their plan to offer a DTC ESPN (probably as part of a Disney+ extended tier) without Venu towards the end of 2025.