Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery just want to get their new streaming sports venture on the field of play.
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The three media giants on Monday pressed the courts for a fast appeal of the shutdown of the their Venu sports streamer , noting that they had already spent $74 million on the joint venture and that the courts had “taken the extraordinary action” of blocking the debut of “a new, consumer-friendly product only weeks before it was set to launch.”
The appeal filing, made in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, comes just 10 days after a U.S. District Court judge barred the trio from launching the new property after complaints from FuboTV, a sports-focused streaming service that alleged the launch of Venu would put it out of business. The judge found that Fubo would likely prevail on claims that the new broadband entity would “substantially lessen competition and restrain trade.” Fubo launched in 2015 as a start-up focused on streaming sports programming.
“Appellants are losing tens of millions of dollars that they have invested in a start-up business that has been blocked from coming to market, dozens of employees who were hired to work for Venu are left in limbo, and consumers are denied access to the innovative new product that Venu would have provided and the increased competition that would result from a new product offering,” the three large media companies said in their legal filing.
Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney and Fox had hoped to launch Venu ahead of the start of this fall’s new NFL season. Now, the three said, they hoped for an expedited appeal that might give them the ability to debut Venu “in time to compete for subscribers in advance of or during the college and NFL playoff games, including the College Football Playoff National Championship, which prospective JV member Disney will broadcast on ESPN on January 20, and the Super Bowl, which prospective JV member Fox will broadcast on February 9, 2025.”
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The three companies said the licenses they granted Venu to carry their networks that carry sports were nonexclusive — and that the cost of the service, $42.99 per month, was cheaper than the prices charged by bigger cable and satellite distributors. They also said that some parties that carry their sports networks, such as Fubo, “already have long-term agreements that guarantee the terms on which those distributors license Appellants’ networks.”
Fox, WBD and Disney are each paying for one-third of Venu’s start-up costs, the companies said in the filing, and each is able to launch other services that offer their sports programming. Warner Bros. Discovery has added a sports tier to its Max streaming service, for example, while ESPN is working to launch a stand-alone direct-to-consumer service it calls Flagship.
The three media companies set out plans for an appeal that would have oral arguments scheduled in court by December of this year.
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