Did Disney, Fox, WBD Rush to Get Venu Sports to Market to Dodge Legal Challenges?
Did Disney, Fox, WBD Rush to Get Venu Sports to Market to Dodge Legal Challenges?
Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery announced Venu in February, and intended to start selling the streamer just six months later.
Sports fans who were biding their time to sign up for Venu Sports ahead of the football season will have to wait a bit longer and perhaps indefinitely. The sports streaming joint venture from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery has been stopped in its tracks by a preliminary injunction granted in Fubo’s antitrust lawsuit against the service. According to revelations from court proceedings, Venu was supposed to launch for customers as early as Friday, Aug. 23, despite being announced just six months ago, which prompts the question of whether its founders knew they had to race to get the streamer to customers before legal challenges could affect its trajectory.
Key Details:
- Streaming technology company Kiswe says that live TV streaming services are much more complex than on-demand streamers.
- The new ESPN streaming service from Disney won’t launch for at least another year.
- Venu was hit with an antitrust lawsuit from Fubo just two weeks after it was announced.
The streaming JV that eventually came to be known as Venu Sports was first announced in February, and at that time that they intended to launch the streamer by fall 2024, presumably ahead of the college football and NFL seasons. Venu was intended to offer livestreams of 14 sports-related channels including ABC, Fox, ESPN, FS1, TNT, and TBS, as well as ESPN+.
The service was almost immediately slapped with an antitrust lawsuit from Fubo just two weeks later, an indication that the live TV streaming service knew it had to act fast before Venu made it to customers. Once the service was actively on the market, it may have been much more difficult for the company to try to put the genie back in the bottle. Programmers like Disney, Fox, and WBD have prevented distributors like Fubo from selling Venu-style channel packages of their own for decades, and the three companies were likely well aware the announcement of Venu was going to ruffle plenty of feathers in the industry.
There are numerous signs that Venu announcement was made in haste. The NFL reportedly had no clue that the streamer was coming, and considered whether or not to use legal means to try and keep its games from being shown on Venu. NBC was so furious that it had been left out of the discussions surrounding Venu that it made a deliberate effort to steal NBA games away from Warner Bros. Discovery, an effort that ultimately proved successful.
How Long Does a Service Like Venu Normally Take to Construct?
According to the streaming technology company Kiswe, which has helped distributed Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz games in their local markets after those teams left regional sports networks, creating a live TV service like Venu is much more difficult than creating an on-demand service. Because there’s only one chance to get a live event right, Kiswe says, there’s a lot more risk in trying to offer livestreams of linear channels that center on live sports than there is in creating an on-demand streamer.
From a technical standpoint, however, such a build would only take Kiswe two to four weeks, according to the company. This window would be enough to include “the ability to stream live, upload on-demand content, integrate merch sales, ad insertion, and fan engagement tools.” This suggests that Venu was not rushed on the technical side specifically to allow the service to hit the market before a judge could stop it. But trying to build Venu completely in-house could have slowed down the process significantly, according to Kiswe.
“Launching a streaming platform can be a huge undertaking and time to market really depends on the company’s strategy,” the company told The Streamable. “For those wanting to build everything in house the turnaround time could be significant as they hire staff and develop the technology needed from the ground up.”
There are also more signs that Disney, Fox, and WBD were in a hurry to start selling Venu. Consider the new ESPN streaming service the company is planning to launch by fall 2025; Disney has planned to debut a streaming option for ESPN that doesn’t require a cable subscription for years. In May 2022, then-CEO Bob Chapek called an ESPN streaming service with all the sports content from the linear family of channels the “ultimate fan offering,” and the current regime led by Bob Iger has continued to tout the value of such an eventuality.
Despite the desire from the company to craft a streaming-only ESPN, the service intended to offer that product won’t be ready to launch until fall 2025. Disney certainly seems to be taking its time and building its new ESPN streamer deliberately, the exact opposite of its strategy with Venu.
Indeed, looking back at the creation process of Venu makes the streamer’s timeline look even more chaotic. The joint venture did not name a CEO until more than a month after it was first announced, and executives didn’t announce a price for the service until Aug. 1, just three weeks before it was supposed to launch for customers.
Without concrete answers from Disney, Fox, or WBD executives — which are not likely to be forthcoming — it’s hard to say what exactly was behind the seeming rush to get Venu to market. But if it was a gambit to try and get the service into customers’ hands before it could be stopped by lawsuits, that plan has failed spectacularly.
Venu Sports
Venu Sports is the planned live TV streaming service offering sports from ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, and truTV. Programming from ESPN+ and on-demand content will also be available. Users will be able to watch NFL, NBA, MLB, and NCAA games. Subscribers can bundle the product with Disney+, Hulu, or Max. Venu’s launch is on hold thanks to a preliminary injunction.