Legal Battle Over Sports Bundling Continues to Boil
By Movieguide® Contributor
A lawsuit between Disney, Fox, Warner Bros Discovery and Fubo reached courts this past Tuesday. The anti-trust lawsuit was filed by Fubo over the three companies’ collaborations to bundle sports and non-sports content.
The lawsuit by Fubo reads, “For decades, Defendants have leveraged their iron grip on sports content to extract billions of dollars in supra-competitive profits from distributors and consumers. Defendants earned many of these profits by ‘bundling’ their commercially critical sports content with other, less desirable content — forcing sports fans to purchase channels they did not want.”
“…once they have combined forces, Defendants’ incentive to exclude Fubo and other rivals will only increase,” the filing added.
Movieguide® previously reported on the bundle, which is called Venu:
Disney, Warners Bros. and Fox announced that they are joining forces to create a single sports streaming bundle.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said that the entertainment industry will take “an important step forward” with this new move.
Per CNBC, “From Disney, that includes ESPN and its sister networks, such as ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, as well as the ABC broadcast network. Warner Bros. Discovery’s networks that showcase sports are TNT, TBS and TruTV. Fox will include the Fox broadcast station along with FS1, FS2 and BTN.”
Fubo is aiming to shut down the companies’ sports content altogether, adding that the joint venture will “irrevocably reduc[e] competition in the market and harm…consumers,” per Deadline.
“Faced with the threat of disruptive competition from Fubo and other upstarts, Defendants have responded by locking arms (and locking others out) to steal Fubo’s core business idea—a sports-centric package of channels—while blocking Fubo from offering that same package,” Fubo’s filing added.
“Venu aggregates the feeds of 15 linear networks owned by the companies and provides them in a package for $43 a month, well below what Fubo and other operators charge,” Deadline reported.
If Fubo’s request is granted, there will be a delay or cancellation of Venu.
Venu would charge a lower price than Fubo at $43/month. Deadline reported that “Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch has said his management team projects Venu will attract about 5 million subscribers in its first five years of operation.”
“The Supreme Court has said that we are allowed to do what they say we are attempting to do. This should not be a referendum on bundling. If they wanted to complain about bundling, they should have come here 40 years ago,” Wes Earnhardt, an attorney for Disney, argued against Fubo’s claim in his opening statement.
U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Garnett is hearing the case at U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
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