Sports streaming service Fubo has managed to temporarily fend off a massive financial threat from Venu Sports, a potential competitor to Disney-Fox-Warner, and its collection of sports streaming licenses thanks to a recent court ruling. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York granted Fubo’s request for an injunction in its antitrust case against the sports streaming joint venture and its parent companies.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett wrote in an opinion issued today that such a concentration of media power would eliminate consumer choice. The launch of Venu would also “increase prices for both consumers and other distributors” and create a “multi-year monopoly runway” in the sports streaming sector for Disney, Fox and Warner.
“Even if the (joint venture) defendants swear that such price gouging and foreclosure will not actually occur (although… there is good reason to believe that it will),” the opinion reads, “one purpose of antitrust injunctions is to prevent anticompetitive incentives from forming in the first place so that American consumers do not have to simply take their word for it and hope for the best.”
Garnett also wrote that the injunction is necessary because of “essential damages that money cannot adequately repair” if Fox-Disney-Warner’s Venu Sports goes forward.
Fox-Disney-Warner first announced plans to launch a live sports streaming channel in February and later revealed the name and pricing for its Venu Sports streaming service. The joint sports streaming venture will cost viewers $42.99 a month with a seven-day free trial and promises 14 channels of live sporting events with access to ESPN+ and four of its spinoff channels, the Fox network and its two Fox Sports channels, and a handful of Warner Bros.-owned cable networks like TNT and TruTV, according to a press release.
Fubo filed its lawsuit a couple of weeks after the initial Fox-Disney-Warner announcement. Fubo’s antitrust suit accused the trio of media giants of mounting “a years-long campaign” to undermine its sports streaming service. The suit also claimed the joint venture would concentrate too many entities into one service and hamper competitiveness and raise prices for viewers and distributors.
The injunction temporarily puts Fox-Disney-Warner's plans for Venu Sports on hold. Its fate will ultimately be determined by the antitrust case in federal court.
