It has been a rough couple of months for the proposed Venu Sports app that would bring many major sports together in one place for cord cutters. The streaming app is a joint venture between Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and Fox, bringing live games for the MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and other sports in each company’s portfolio together.
Back in August, the app was planned to launch before the fall sports season, however, a lawsuit by Fubo prevented the launch due to an injunction. The trio of companies are now working to get the injunction overturned after filing an appeal.
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch gave his thoughts about the future of Venu and what the companies are aiming to do at a Goldman Sachs conference. Lachlan stated that the Venu is “not meant to jeopardize the traditional pay-TV business,” according to a report from the Hollywood Reporter:
“If we lose a cable subscriber to Venu, we lose money in that transaction, because we lose the subscriber to Fox News, the local station retransmission is built within Venu, but we lose the Fox News subscribers,” Murdoch says. “So we don’t want to have a like to like swap of cable to Venu. We want to target Venu very much, just at the cord cutters who’ve already cut the cord or were never in the system to begin with.”
Due to splintered nature of sports and various apps to watch them, Murdoch argued how Venu will benefit fans because “it’s pro-consumer, it’s pro-sports fan,” from the report:
“It’s at an affordable cost, and it really cleans up a lot of what I think, what’s become complicated or broken in the sports rights environment in the United States,” he continued, noting that now to watch every NFL game people need a pay-TV subscription but also a flurry of streaming services. “For the same games you paid $64 for three years ago, you have to pay $114 and you have effectively, five different devices or five different subscriptions. That’s nuts.”
As the digital landscape continues to grow and more fans transition to cord cutting, leagues are bound to make more games available on streaming platforms. The NFL could opt out of its current deal sooner than expected and the NBA and NHL could provide more regional games on Amazon
Lachlan also says that Fox is focusing more on sports betting (FanDuel), which is why the company didn’t pursue the NBA during their new TV deal and decided to let the WWE move on to another network.
Another report from The Wrap has a quote from Lachlan expressing how Venu Sports isn’t about the channels and networks the games air on, but instead, it’ll be marketed around the leagues themselves:
“People haven’t seen it, haven’t been able to actually use it and touch it. It doesn’t look like a cable service, right? It doesn’t look like a bundle of channels,” he explained. “You wouldn’t even use the channel brands to market it. So you’re not going to say, ‘It’s Fox Sports 1 and 2 or ESPN.’ Rather, you say, ‘This is your home of NFL or NBA’ … it’s organized by sport and by what the consumer wants, not by trying to manage what channels my game is on tonight.”
However, the Fubo case argues that the three companies teaming up for a joint venture hurt their competition in the streaming market and could cause “severe harm and possible bankruptcy” for Fubo. There have also been calls from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for the Department of Justice to investigate Venu Sports due to its share of the market.
One company that airs many major sports but isn’t part of Venu is NBCU. Currently, the NBC Sports portfolio features the PGA, NFL, the Olympics, and IndyCar, among others, and in 2025 the NBA returns to the network.
NBCUniversal chairman Mark Lazarus shared his thoughts about Venu Sports and how “it doesn’t work in its current form,” during the Front Office Sports Tuned in Summit in New York, according to a report from Front Office Sports:
“Why don’t you offer that bundle to others?” Lazarus told FOS editor in chief Dan Roberts. “Why can’t Comcast or Charter or Fubo [have the bundle]? As a consumer, it’s an incomplete service. It doesn’t have all sports. It’s three companies and leaves out us, and Paramount and Amazon, who have major sports portfolios or growing portfolios.”
Like Sanders, Warren, Fubo, and others, Lazarus also rhetorically questioned the legality of a bundle like Venu in the report, asking, “Is there an informal alliance on bidding on properties, and is that legal?”
DIRECTV and Disney are currently in a contract dispute which has caused ESPN and other Disney-owned channels to go dark on the platform. As questions of Venu’s legality arise, Disney has reportedly wanted DIRECTV to support its fight against Fubo to get the networks back during the negotiations. Disney also rejected DIRECTV’s request to temporarily restore those channels.
Lachlan said that the trio’s joint venture was granted an expedited hearing appeal on the injunction. For now, sports fans will have to wait and see if and when Venu launches.