Why Disney Scrapped Sports Streaming Service Venu
By Movieguide® Contributor
The Walt Disney Company, along with Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox, scrapped their sports streaming service Venu Sports last month, and Disney CEO Bob Iger is explaining why.
“Look, what essentially happened is, after the decision was made and we started to implement the launch of Venu, the emergence of these skinnier bundles surfaced, and Venu basically looked redundant to us. And so this was a great opportunity for us to make ESPN available on multiple skinny bundles,” Iger said.
The service was initially poised to “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.”
However, legal issues with Fubo plagued the venture, and the entertainment giants’ decided to discontinue development.
For Disney, the goal all along has been “to make ESPN as accessible as possible and in as many ways as possible to the consumer,” Iger continued. “Some will want to consume it just through an app. Some will want to consume it as part of the more traditional, expanded basic bundle, some will migrate into in the direction of skinnier bundles, or sports bundles only.”
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“I can’t predict whether the emergence of these skinnier bundles is going to have a material impact on cord cutting or not, except to say that we plan to take advantage of the emergence of these bundles, because it is a great way to distribute ESPN,” Iger added.
According to The Wrap, Disney now plans to focus on developing Flagship, “the current name of ESPN’s standalone streaming offering.”
Iger said that Flagship will include “‘some combination’ of betting and fantasy along with a ‘high degree of customization and personalization’ and more programming than ESPN’s linear channels currently offer,” the outlet explained. Disney hopes to launch it this fall.
“We’re actually quite excited about it because, first of all, it gives us an opportunity to bundle it with Disney+ and Hulu, and we will get really smart and strategic about pricing there,” Iger explained. “But it gives consumers the option of basically just staying in a sports-only experience or combining it with their other services.”
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