Just days after a potential merger with Fubo cleared the way, the launch of Venu Sports is now facing new opposition from DirecTV and Dish.
DirecTV and Dish issued letters to federal court on Tuesday arguing that despite Fubo dropping its lawsuit against the proposed Venu joint venture, the legal questions surrounding Venu’s antitrust violations remain unanswered, according to The Desk.
In its letter, DirectTV argued that the defendants in the Venu case — Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Fox Corporation — had sought to in effect “pay off and seek to subsume the very competitor that raised these antitrust violations to the Court. However, Defendants cannot purchase their way out of the antitrust violations.”
Dish shared a similar sentiment in its letter, writing that the settlement and merger was reached in order to “eliminate court jurisdiction … by effectuating the preliminary injunction’s expiration, rather than addressing the underlying competition issues.”
Venu Sports was initially announced in February 2024 as a joint venture by Warner Bros. Discovery, The Walt Disney Company, and Fox Corporation to distribute sports content via a new direct-to-consumer streaming service. The three companies hold combined US rights to a vast majority of nationally-televised MLB, NBA, NHL, and college sports events, as well as roughly half of all NFL games.
While intended to debut in August 2024, the planned launch was delayed by an antitrust lawsuit from Fubo, which argued that the joint venture undercut its competition by providing sports channels without bundling in the low-value entertainment networks that other distributors were forced to carry, a claim that a US district judge found merited when issuing a preliminary injunction weeks before football season.
Then on Monday, Fubo and Disney announced a deal to merge their streaming TV businesses (Hulu+Live TV, in Disney’s case), with Disney taking a 70% stake in a new entity that would manage both services. As part of this merger, Fubo agreed to drop its antitrust claim against the Venu operators.
DirecTV and Dish, operators of two of the five major vMVPD streaming-TV bundles (DIRECTV Stream and Sling, respectively), had supported Fubo in the antitrust suit, but are now raising their own concerns directly.
The two companies are considering two routes to proceed: one in which they sue the Venu joint venture directly, essentially picking up where Fubo left off. Alternatively, they could sue to block the merger between Fubo and Disney, turning their back on the company that they initially supported in its fight against Venu.
But another twist exists for DirecTV: during its carriage dispute negotiations in September, Disney reportedly requested that DirecTV be no longer allowed to describe Disney’s distribution deals as “anticompetitive”. It’s not known whether or not DirecTV consented to that term specifically as part of its new agreement with Disney, but DirecTV is generally contractually prohibited from legally targeting Disney on the basis of its distribution deals.
Reporting earlier this week had indicated that Venu was prepared to announce a launch date “immediately”, with speculation suggesting it could launch in time for Fox’s telecast of Super Bowl LIX on February 9, although new legal battles may delay that even further.
Disney and ESPN are also continuing to develop their own direct-to-consumer sports streaming service, internally nicknamed “Flagship”, prior to the 2025 football season.
The letters to the court were published by Awful Announcing.
