Disney, Fox, Warner Bros. Announce Name of Sports Streaming Service

Published: May 20, 2024

Disney, Fox, Warner Bros. Announce Name of Sports Streaming Service

By Movieguide® Contributor

Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have unveiled the name of their new joint streaming venture: Venu Sports.

“We are excited to officially introduce Venu Sports, a brand that we feel captures the spirit of an all-new streaming home where sports fans outside of the traditional pay TV eco-system can experience an incredible collection of live sports, all in one place,” CEO Pete Distad said. “As preparations for the platform continue to accelerate, we are singularly focused on delivering a best-in-class product for our target audience, built from the ground up using the latest technologies to engage and entertain discerning sports fans wanting one-stop access to live games.”

ESPN reported that the streaming service “will bring together the companies’ portfolios of sports networks and certain direct to consumer services in a compelling new streaming sports service to allow underserved fans to get the most out of every game.”

“The service will aggregate linear feeds from 14 sports-centric networks and ‘certain direct-to-consumer services,’ Venu said. Pricing has not yet announced, but most Wall Street analysts and industry observers have predicted it will cost at least $40 a month. NBCUniversal and Paramount Global, notably, are not part of the venture and the current partners do not expect to add additional stakeholders in the near future,” Deadline reported.

Venu Sports is expected to launch this fall and will be made directly available to consumers through a new app. It will also be bundled with Disney+, Hulu or Max.

“We’re running really hard and really fast to get the service up and running before the start of the college football season this year,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said earlier this year.

Movieguide® previously reported on the sports streaming service:

Lachlan Murdoch, Fox’s chief, teased his company’s upcoming sports streaming venture with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, revealing that he believes the final product will revolutionize the industry.

“It’s very innovative. It’s designed to be entirely focused on the cord-nevers, cord cutters, people who are not in the cable bundle. And frankly you won’t be able to compare it to a tier of live channels,” Murdoch told investors during an earnings call. “It is a very different, digital-first product. When you eventually get it and get to enjoy it, you will understand how ground-breaking, certainly in this country, it really is.”

“Everyone is running at full pace to get the product finished and delivered,” he continued. “Obviously there is the fun side of it, which is the user interface and how you use it. But there is a ton of work obviously in engineering behind that, in ingesting content from multiple partners and to be able to combine that to make a seamless product.”

The joint venture between Fox, Disney/ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery was announced earlier this year as an alternative route to live sports that circumvents traditional cable bundles. In March, former Apple and Hulu executive Pete Distad was appointed as the head of the service.