What’s on deck:
But first, there appears to be a flag in the play.
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The Big Story
False start
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The attempt to launch a new sports streamer has raised some thorny questions for the media industry.
Venu Sports, a joint venture between Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, was dealt a major blow when a court blocked the company’s launch on the eve of the start of football season. But the issue isn’t unique to Venu and could ultimately call into question the way media companies bundle their services for customers, Business Insider’s James Faris writes.
Background: Early details about Venu caught a lot of attention back in February. Sports is a golden opportunity for media companies because it’s one of the few things people still watch live.
But there were also signs of potential roadblocks: BI’s Peter Kafka spoke to industry executives at the time who said sports leagues and pay-TV providers spooked by the news might resist the effort.
FuboTV, a virtual pay-TV provider, eventually filed a lawsuit, alleging that Venu had an unfair advantage. Like Venu, Fubo also tried to launch a sports-focused streamer, but the media giant demanded that it also include non-sports channels, driving up the price to $80.
But when the media giant launched its sports streamer, the same rules didn’t apply: They didn’t mandate non-sports channels, which allowed them to keep the price at just $43.
A judge issued a preliminary injunction last week blocking Fubo from releasing Venu, but if the matter escalates to a jury trial, the tried-and-true practice of creating forced bundling may ultimately be called into question.
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While some of the impacts of the Venu launch delay will be immediate, other effects will take time to manifest.
While Venu’s plans aren’t completely squashed, it’s hard to overstate the significance of America’s most popular sport, football, facing a postponement just before its season was due to begin. College football begins Week 0 this Saturday, and the NFL season doesn’t begin until September 5. That means fans will have found alternative streaming options long before Venu has a solution.
(Even if Venu gets the green light, as Peter previously pointed out, a ton of important sports would still be missing, including NFL games on CBS and NBC.)
But the broader impact on how TV will or won’t be bundled will take some time to figure out, and the fight between Venu and Fubo will likely be a drawn-out legal battle. (The real winners are always the lawyers.)
TV bundles have faced a lot of pressure in recent years, and bundling can have some unique consequences, such as Disney+ adding Hulu programming that could lead to parental panic over their kids being unintentionally exposed to adult content, BI’s Katie Notopoulos wrote.
But it’s not going to last as a business model for much longer without some degree of resilience. And dare I say it, bundling isn’t that bad. I subscribe to so many streaming services that, financially, cutting the cord didn’t hurt me much.
Ultimately, the media giants may offer concessions to keep the bundle alive, like the Charter-Disney deal last year that Peter pointed me to.
Fubo’s sports-focused bundles were initially tailored to soccer fans, but since soccer is not a core sport of Venu’s service, there may be some room for compromise.
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