Disney's Catch and Kill

Disney wanted to corner the market on sports streaming. A rival blocked them. So Disney bought the rival.

by David Dayen January 7, 2025


One of the shoes I’m expecting to drop in the new year is the further consolidation of Hollywood. Cable is dead, streaming is still not profitable, and the major players have been circling one another for years. The change in power in Washington will create more space for mergers, and with media in particular sucking up to Donald Trump, he may not intervene the way he did with the AT&T/Time Warner deal.

That sets the stage for an audacious announcement yesterday that ends a private antitrust lawsuit against the biggest studios by simply buying the plaintiff.

Disney announced Monday morning that it will buy out sports-forward streaming TV service FuboTV, which sets the stage for a new joint venture, Venu Sports, combining the sports programming of Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery. That bundle would deliver nearly all baseball and hockey programming, a large portion of NFL and college football games, and over 50 percent of televised sporting events overall, in one streaming service.

Venu’s launch was blocked last year in federal court by Fubo, on the grounds that putting three different networks with sports broadcast rights under one service would muscle out competition. Fubo’s business model, which allows users to stream live channels with an emphasis on sports networks, would be particularly at risk. “A marketplace that offers only one sports-focused package of channels is monopolistic,” Fubo argued in a public campaign against Venu. A federal judge agreed with the antitrust suit Fubo filed and granted a preliminary injunction against Venu.

https://prospect.org/culture/2025-01-07-disneys-catch-and-kill-fubo-sports/

America needs Lina Khan.