With Venu Sports Likely Dead, Should Fox Finally Invest in a Sports Streaming Option of Its Own?
With Venu Sports Likely Dead, Should Fox Finally Invest in a Sports Streaming Option of Its Own?
Fox has traditionally used live sports like its NFL package as leverage to force providers to carry Fox News, but it may be time to rethink that strategy.
Unless a miracle occurs, there’s a good chance the Venu Sports joint venture service is no more. Last week, a judge granted Fubo’s request for a temporary injunction against Venu, which means it will be months before the service gets to customers in the best-case scenario, and dramatically raises the chance that Venu will never hit the market at all. Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery will be sent back to the drawing board to distribute their live sports right via streaming in that eventuality, which is a daunting prospect for Fox, considering it does not currently have a streaming platform that houses its biggest sports content, not even in the planning stages. It may be time to change that, as Fox is falling behind quickly in the sports streaming game.
Key Details:
- Fox has often used its NFL package and other sports as leverage in carriage deals, which has helped it keep linear revenues high.
- Fox CFO Steven Tomsic said in 2023 that the cable bundle was still the most efficient way for the company to distribute its sports rights.
- Disney and WBD have sports streaming alternatives available or in the works, but Fox does not.
As laid out by The Streamable expert Ben Bowman in 2022, one of the biggest reasons that Fox has not gone to the trouble of crafting a sports streaming service to carry its live sports options is that it uses properties its NFL package, the Big Noon college football show and its attendant games, MLB games and more as leverage in carriage negotiations. Anyone who wants to get these sports has to take Fox News as well, ensuring the company continues to pull in as much revenue as possible from distributors.
Last September, Fox CFO Steven Tomsic said the company was keeping an eye on the state of cable in general, but that the cable bundle was still the best way to distribute Fox’s live sports.
Right here, right now, the most efficient, effective way for a consumer to receive sports and news is still in the bundle,” he said. “The best way that we monetize our content remains in the bundle. That may change over time and we’ll adapt to that, but we still think that a bundled offering to the consumer where sport and news will become the bedrock of that is the best way to get to the consumer.”
The time for change may be coming, however. Advertising revenue has been stagnant for the company for the past two quarters, as viewers continue to leave the cable bundle in favor of streamers and other video platforms. Even Disney, the company that owns the most popular — and most expensive — cable channel of them all in ESPN is looking to create new streaming options to keep the channel alive as cablers falter.
Could Fox Put Live Sports on Current Streamers?
Currently, the only two streaming services Fox offers are Fox Nation and Tubi. Fox Nation is more of a news and lifestyle service marketed toward right-wing viewers that also voraciously consume Fox News content, and Tubi is a free, ad-supported service. In other words, neither is a great fit for live sports streams.
Fox would likely need to create a new streaming service from the ground up to house its live sports, which is why Venu was so convenient for the company. It got to share the costs and the risks of the service with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, but now that Venu has been blocked by an injunction, it’s essentially back to square one for Fox.
If the company decides not to create a streaming service of its own for live sports, the only option left to it is to continue selling its channels to cable distributors that operate via streaming, such as DIRECTV STREAM and Fubo. But that leaves it with less control over its most popular properties, and it doesn’t get to keep as much of the revenue generated for itself.
Fox has put itself in something of a fix, especially now that Venu has been consigned to purgatory. It has no other in-house sports streaming options in the works, and as declines from its linear channels mount in the coming years, it will likely have to try and throw one together if it wants to make the case to leagues that it has an audience waiting should they decide to sell their rights to the company.
Fox Nation
Fox Nation is an entertainment streaming service created by Fox News and gives subscribers access to full, commercial-free episodes from well-known right-wing personalities like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as entertainment from Kevin Costner, Kelsey Grammer, Sharon Osbourne, Roseanne Barr, and Rob Schneider. Fox Nation service can be accessed as a standalone streamer or as an add-on to the live TV streaming services DIRECTV STREAM and Fubo. Start streaming today with a five-day free trial.