The joint sports streaming venture from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros Discovery is the subject of an antitrust lawsuit by Fubo. The three media giants claim that Fubo’s “precarious financial condition” has nothing to do with Venu Sports.
What’s Happening:
- The Wrap reports that Fubo argues it could be pushed into insolvency at the end of the Preliminary Injunction Trial for their antitrust lawsuit against Venu Sports.
- Currently, US District Judge Margaret Garnett will decide whether to grant Fubo the preliminary injunction that would, at least, delay the launch of the joint streaming service.
- Today, lawyers for all four media companies filed post-trial memos making final arguments.
- Fubo filed the antitrust lawsuit back in February of this year. The initial suit accuses Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros Discovery of engaging in anticompetitive practices, with Venu Sports being the latest attempt. Fubo also notes that the trio have forced them to carry dozens of non-sports channels, preventing the service from providing users with better prices and a more refined product.
- Venu is expected to launch this fall at $42.99 and will offer subscribers access to thousands of live sports with ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV, and ESPN+. Users will also be able to bundle Venu with Disney+, Hulu and Max.
- In Fubo’s post-trial memo, the company accused the trio of trying to create a monopoly.
- In internal documents, the service is expected to attract 50-67% of subscribers from the pay-TV ecosystem.
- Fubo wrote “Fubo will face insolvency absent an injunction. But there is literally no harm to multibillion media giants if Raptor is delayed for some period of time while the merits of the case can be fully resolved… While Defendants’ lawyers argued in summation that a delayed launch might cause harm, they made no efforts to introduce evidence that could support that argument and they pointed to no record evidence. They will not suffer anything other than a temporary delay, assuming they prevail at trial.”
- The trio of media giants argued they have every right to license their networks on their terms, and have no obligation to provide Fubo with the ability to assemble its own similar bundle. They also noted that Venu can be bundled with outside services such as Peacock or Paramount+. They claimed Fubo lacks standing in the case, and that their complaint lies solely in frustrations with increased competition.
- “The downstream market for distribution of sports programming to consumers is competitive and unconcentrated, with many traditional MVPDs and vMVPDs, as well as new entries from DTCs and SVODs. Venu will be another new entrant, which by definition reduces concentration,” they state. “No one expects Venu to earn more than a relatively small market share (even if, as Fubo contends, the market were limited to MVPDs and vMVPDs).”
- The trio pointed out that consumers can already create skinny sports packages and that Fubo is contractually obligated to carry non-sports channels.
- Fubo CEO David Gander testified the service could lose over 25% of its subscriber base if Venu is allowed to launch. The trio argued their argument lacks credibility.
- Venu projects to have 1.8 million subscribers by the end of 2025, with only half from existing Multichannel Video Programming Distributors. They state Fubo would only lose around 20,000 subscribers.
- “Even if Fubo’s dubious projections withstood scrutiny, Fubo has not shown that any harm is imminent,” they wrote. “Taking the midpoint of its ‘high’ and ‘low’ impact scenarios, Fubo will have more subscribers and higher revenue at year-end 2024 (following a launch of Venu around Sept. 1, 2024) than it did at June 30, 2024.”
- Additionally, they noted that Fubo’s financial situation predates Venu.
- If the court issues an injunction, Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros Discovery have requested to be paid $100 million from Fubo to compensate for losses from the launch delay.
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