Venu Sports venture to be discontinued

Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney-owned ESPN and Fox have discontinued Venu Sports, a proposed joint sport streaming service and linear subscription.

A statement from the trio said: “After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service. 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. 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.”

Venu Sports had been thought to have overcome a possible hurdle this week, with Fubo dropping its antitrust lawsuit against the proposal after forming a 70%-Disney-owned joint venture with Hulu + Live TV. However, just days later, the idea has now been dropped. DirecTV had challenged the dismissal of that lawsuit.

Warner Bros. Discovery, ESPN and Fox announced an understanding to form a joint sport streaming service in the US in February 2024. The plan was for each broadcaster to own one-third of the entity, have equal representation on its board, but for it to have an independent management team, and show the trio’s content non-exclusively.

Later given the name Venu Sports, it would have included a streaming platform as well as access to linear channels, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV, and ESPN+ and opportunities to bundle with Disney+, Hulu and/or Max.