Disney, Fox, and WBD say they have agreed to discontinue their Venu Sports streaming joint venture and will focus on existing products and distribution channels
Sigh. Streaming TV prices are going to get obscene in 2025. — www.theverge.com/2025/1/10/24... Mastodon: @SuffolkLITLab@esq.social : TL;DR: Venu Sports, the anticipated joint streaming venture from ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, has been officially scrapped due to legal challenges from competitor Fubo and shifting market demands. … @Kierkegaanks@beige.party : @Techmeme As in we can't get enough people to pay for sports exclusively, so we'll bundle it with our regular content, force it on the users, and lie about it being added value Threads: Chris Welch / @chriswelch : So the end result of all this is just... less competition? Now that Fubo and Hulu with Live TV have merged? Cool. Cool cool cool. Streaming TV prices are gonna get truly outrageous in 2025. X: Matthew Keys / @matthewkeyslive : I think we're probably the only publication to note that Venu Sports hired quite a few executives away from great jobs at the Los Angeles Rams, SiriusXM and Apple to support their venture, and the job security of those executives is now uncertain. @tvgrimreaper : The Desperation Bundle™ is dead! Long live The Desperation Bundle™! Alex Sherman / @sherman4949 : At least CNN+ got 30 days Alex Sherman / @sherman4949 : This is a major bummer for everyone who had been hired by Venu, which has continued to hire even through the Fubo temporary injunction. Several I spoke with were extremely happy earlier this week after the Fubo merger. This is a shocking reversal. https://www.cnbc.com/... Todd Spangler / @xpangler : Before it could open, Venu is closed. Read about why Disney, Fox & Warner Bros. Discovery are ceasing their sports streaming joint venture https://variety.com/... via @variety Alex Weprin / @alexweprin : Just in: Venu, the sports streaming service, is dead. Disney, WBD and Fox are pulling the plug. Peter Kafka / @pkafka : Last week the JV settled a legal fight with Fubo that they thought would let them launch. But DirecTV and Dish were threatening their own suits, so... @jacobfeldman4 : RIP Venu Sports [image] Eben Novy-Williams / @novy_williams : BREAKING: Venu Sports, the product joint launched by ESPN, Fox and WBD, will be “discontinued”. [image] Matt Stoller / @matthewstoller : The mega sports streaming joint venture is dead. Disney/Fox/Warner Bros have pulled the plug on Venu, Disney's purchase of Fubo has a better rationale now. [image] @espnpr : Venu Sports, the proposed virtual MVPD service from ESPN, FOX & Warner Bros. Discovery, will be discontinued The collective decision by the three companies not to move forward with the contemplated joint venture is effective immediately
Context & Ripple Effects
Venu was conceived as a joint sports-streaming offer from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, with a planned $42.99 monthly price. Its rollout was stopped by a judge after Fubo's antitrust suit, before the service reached customers. The pre-launch injunction turned a distribution experiment into a legal and strategic risk.
The partners now say they will concentrate on their existing products and distribution channels. Reporting tied the cancellation to avoiding a prolonged case that could put broader bundling arrangements at risk. The decision to avoid that litigation risk matters as much as the loss of Venu itself.
First-order effects
- Disney, Fox, and WBD immediately abandon a shared standalone route to sports viewers and revert to distributing sports through their existing services and channels.
- Fubo's challenge has helped prevent Venu from launching, while the three partners avoid the costs and uncertainty of continuing the litigation.
Second-order effects
- The companies must pursue sports-streaming growth through their own offerings and distribution partners rather than a jointly controlled package, preserving the importance of their current bundle relationships.
- The outcome raises the legal stakes for future partnerships that combine major programmers' sports rights, especially where a new package could alter competitors' access to those channels.
Third-order effects
- The episode suggests that streaming's unbundling push can be constrained by the economics and legal sensitivities of legacy distribution; rights holders may favor incremental changes to existing bundles over jointly built alternatives.
- If similar challenges persist, sports streaming may develop through individual services and narrower distribution deals rather than broad cross-company aggregators, though that depends on how courts and distributors treat future arrangements.
The trend: Sports media companies are testing direct-to-consumer distribution while trying to protect the bundle economics and competitive access on which their existing channels still rely.