Divergent priorities, an evolving media landscape, ongoing legal threats and the march of time just crushed a joint venture called Venu Sports.
Of Venu’s three big media partners, Fox may be a winner, some think. Warner Bros. Discovery is back where it started. Disney has complicated its business a bit, but that could pay off. Smaller Fubo, which held up Venu’s launch up so long that the venture became moot, has a pot of fresh cash and a new deep-pocketed parent, Disney, in the wings.
Venu’s story unfolded over the course of a full year. The three media giants announced Venu Sports in early February of 2024. Fubo filed an antitrust suit weeks later and won a temporary injunction so Venu could not make a planned August launch. But the partners burned through tens of millions of dollars anyway with the case still pending, hiring executives and engineers, building it out, pricing it.
The trio settled the Fubo suit last Monday for $220 million, clearing the way for Venu. Disney also agreed to merge its Hulu + Live TV into Fubo for a 70% stake in the expanded, publicly traded video provider, a deal no one saw coming. Yesterday, the partners unexpectedly shuttered their JV.
“After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service. In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels,” they said.
“This brings to a close a year’s worth of strategy decisions that at nearly every turn left us with many more questions than answers,” said MoffettNathanson in a note Friday.
Industry excitement around Venu when it was first unveiled can’t be overstated. Love it or hate it, it was something original, a skinny bundle, a MVPD, for the digital age in a fast-changing industry that really does needs to experiment. But as the suit dragged on with the temporary injunction and a trial not scheduled until fall of 2025, that excitement fizzled.
Meanwhile, Disney’s ESPN+ flagship launch became its priority and a distraction. WBD lost professional basketball so had less to contribute to Venu. Fox has been wary of SVOD, some industry players noted. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch had pegged Venu at 5 million subscribers in the first five years, so it was never going to be a blockbuster. Disney and DirecTV agreed to skinny bundles in a carriage renewal. The dynamics had changed. Asked about Venu’s prospects on earnings calls or at investment conferences as 2024 advanced, executives at the three partners sounded increasingly less optimistic but never dire, whatever happened.
Joint ventures in even the best of circumstances are notoriously difficult to pull off. Hulu is one example. Disney bought out Comcast, finally, but the two have been haggling endlessly over the price tag. Speaking of which, analyst Rich Greenfield wondered how the never-ending Disney buyout of Comcast’s Hulu stake is impacted by this Fubo transaction, saying it would impact the value of Hulu.
Where Things Stand
Now, “Disney is left to either double down on vMVPDs and stick to its recently announced Fubo deal, or to cut its losses and pay the deal’s $130 million termination fee. WBD is back in more or less the same position it likely would have been in regardless of whether Venu ever launched. And Fox could end up getting the final laugh,” wrote MoffettNathanson’s Robert Fishman.
Of the Murdoch-run company, he said: no other has “the most to gain from the testing of the Venu thesis that there is an appetite out there for skinnier bundles” — especially with a sports and news focus. “Given Fox’s already skinny cable network offering focused on highly watched sports and news content, the fat in” bigger bundles would almost certainly be cut elsewhere. “If this does in fact play out, it could make the money and man-power Fox poured into Venu pay for itself many times over.”
Alicia Reese of Wedbush Securities noted that after WBD lost its rights to regular and postseason games for its TNT network to Amazon in July, the David Zaslav-run company didn’t have much left to contribute to the new service, which “would have been mostly ESPN, which Disney can offer standalone, for example, in its upcoming ESPN flagship app, or through combinations. Disney’s ultimate goal is to get ESPN content to consumers in as many ways as it can,” she said “Venu was just one additional way to do that.”
Legal challenges loomed beyond Fubo, most immediately pushback from the nation’s two big satellite TV providers, Dish and DirecTV, who insisted that antitrust issues remained and asked the New York judge not to approve the settlement. It became too much of a headache and a potentially risky business proposition for the three companies to continue fighting to launch Venu.
Ultimately, the case would not only have put Venu on trial but also “the industry’s long-standing practice of network owners bundling their desirable networks with their less desirable ones,” said Fishman, “With the cable network cash flows that Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery each rely on at risk, the three partners decided to, at long last, cut their losses and call it quits.”
“We look forward to working with our programming partners – including Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery – to compete on a level playing field to deliver sports fans more choice, control, and value all-in-one experience,” DirecTV said Friday after Venu’s demise.
For some, Fubo remains a question mark. “It remains to be seen whether or not the shutdown of Venu Sports will disrupt the agreement between Disney and Fubo,” Reese says.
Greenfield wondered that too. “What surprised us most initially (beyond the deal being announced in the first place), was that Fubo said the timeframe to close was 12-18 months. Given it is a relatively small transaction with no FCC approval needed … we cannot understand why it would take so long and Fubo has offered no rationale for the timing comment. We also wonder if the time to close will be impacted by the Venu shutdown.”
Fishman thinks Disney should bail. “The best answer we can come up with today that would cap off this week is for Disney to exit and pretend the Fubo deal never happened. Then at least investors can start to focus on a more cohesive sports and streaming strategy.”
Fubo shares, which soared on Monday after the deal, fell on Friday.
Other’s don’t. There’s that $130 million breakup fee. Strategically, some, including analyst Paolo Pescatore, believe Disney is in the process of moving away from pay TV, so it makes sense to hand off Hulu Live to Fubo CEO David Gandler and his management team to run. Disney can focus on the rest of its streaming business.
He speculated that Disney’s 70% interest in Fubo could follow a similar track to that of DirecTV.
AT&T sold its 70% stake in the satcaster to TPG last year for $7.6 billion.
Dade Hayes contributed to this report
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