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ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery are ending plans to form a joint sports streaming service.
Venu Sports — a proposed bundled streaming service of the offerings by ESPN, Fox Sports and TNT Sports — will be discontinued immediately, the three companies said in a joint statement Friday.
“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,” they said. “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.”
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The three entities first announced plans for Venu Sports in February 2024. Its launch was temporarily blocked following a legal challenge by Fubo that argued the venture would lessen competition in the live pay TV market. Earlier this week, Disney and Fubo announced they were combining Disney’s Hulu + Live TV business with Fubo, which effectively settled the Fubo-led litigation.
But the Fubo deal, plus a recent agreement between Disney and DirecTV to offer Disney’s streaming services in select packages, means those entities will be able to add “skinny bundles” in sports that will be Venu Sports-esque, according to a source briefed on the reasoning. The fact that DirecTV and Dish indicated they could have interest in continuing the litigation that Fubo just ended also factored into shuttering Venu.
What this means
While Venu Sports is gone, its memory will not be completely forgotten.
From the jump, it was always an incomplete offering, but it just became a mess for ESPN, Fox Sports and TNT Sports. The combination of litigation and officials like Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaking out against it resulted it in its dissolution before it ever billed its first subscription.
The hype was always overdone, as we pointed out initially nearly a year ago with a column headlined, “New ESPN, Fox, WBD streaming venture won’t solve much — at least not yet.” Well, it didn’t solve anything.
However, while Venu joins the sports history scraps with the likes of Bill Belichick as “HC of the NYJ” as moves that were over before they began, its idea of a combo of sports networks in the $40-50 per month price range will live on.
With the Fubo and Hulu + Live deal and with the recent Disney carriage agreements with DirecTV, ESPN, Fox Sports and TNT Sports will be able to combine into “skinny bundles,” where subscribers are expected to have the option to pick smaller offerings to watch and, more importantly, just pay for, rather than a traditional complete package of channels.
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Venu Sports was always overrated by the industry as some sort of game changer. It will live on in spirit as ESPN specifically wants to hit direct-to-consumer subscribers at different price points. — Andrew Marchand, sports media columnist
What’s next?
ESPN will — likely in August — begin its own all-you-can-eat, direct-to-consumer service — code-named “Flagship” — that is currently expected to be priced in the $25-30 range. Fubo and DirectTV and maybe others will be able to hit the $50 limited sports bundle, while viewers could have a more traditional streamer, like Fubo or YouTubeTV for $80 that would include other channels.
Optionality is what Disney/ESPN is still attempting to accomplish. — Marchand
One more thing to watch
There was also an interesting note from Puck’s Matthew Belloni, who suggested that ESPN might “supercharge the offering with Fox Sports, whose combo of the NFL and college football, World Series baseball, and much more would give Flagship more than $15 billion worth of sports rights in one service. Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall has been predicting this for a while—in December, he wrote that an ESPN-Fox combo could lead to 3 million subs for Flagship by the end of the year.”
An ESPN-Fox partnership of some sort is something interesting to watch with the dissolution of Venu. — Richard Deitsch, sports media columnist
(Photo: Luke Hales / Getty Images)
