The sports bundle landscape continues to change, with DIRECTV launching a new sport-specific bundle within days of Venu Sports shutting down.
DIRECTV announced Tuesday that it has launched a sport-specific streaming “skinny bundle” consisting of the major sports cable networks and three of the “big four” broadcast networks — ABC, FOX and NBC. (DIRECTV is in negotiations with CBS owner Paramount, per The Wall Street Journal.)
Titled “MySports,” the package will be available on DIRECTV STREAM for an initial promotional price of $50/mo, with that rising to $70/mo after three months. By comparison, a base DIRECTV STREAM subscription is $87/mo. Outside of Sling, which can run as low as $45/mo, no streaming MVPD currently offers a lower price.
The package is currently limited to 24 markets, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It will eventually expand to include other markets and include additional local networks, additional cable outlets and ESPN+ for no additional charge.
The launch of MySports comes within a week of Venu Sports — the planned sports streaming bundle of Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corporation — shuttering before it ever launched. MySports will be considerably more expensive than Venu would have been ($43/mo), but it will also carry more channels.
Venu collapsed under pressure from the various carriers, from traditional cable/satellite companies to streaming MVPDs, who argued that the companies behind Venu were violating antitrust by creating a service consisting solely of sports networks while requiring that competing services inflate their bundles with little-watched entertainment channels.
Fubo sued Venu’s backers and won an injunction blocking its launch, but dropped its legal challenge after reaching a merger deal with Disney earlier this month. In the wake of that decision — which looked as if it would pave the way for Venu to launch — DIRECTV and Dish Network were said to be considering their own legal options. Soon after that news broke, Venu was called off for good.
The result of the Fubo legal challenge appears to be the proverbial dam breaking on sport-specific skinny bundles. Fubo’s merger deal with Disney grants it the right to launch a sport-specific skinny bundle consisting of the ESPN networks and ABC, in essence what will be eventually offered by the ESPN flagship direct-to-subscriber service later this year.
