Venu Sports, the streaming skinny bundle being jointly launched by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, is reportedly facing the hard-to-imagine: getting slapped with a preliminary injunction that would keep the $42.99-a-month service from launching this fall as planned.
According to Puck's Eriq Gardner, who popped into a hearing this week in virtual MVPD operator Fubo's antitrust trial against Venu, granting a preliminary injunction that would stop the JV from launching at least until next year is indeed obtainable.
Also read: Venu Sports Stays Below vMVPD Partners on Price
"From the several days of testimony I witnessed — packed with executives, consultants, and economists — it feels like a preliminary injunction might just be on the table," Gardner wrote. Judge Margaret Garnett "seems genuinely concerned by the extraordinary influence that could be wielded by an alliance of the sector’s behemoths," he added.
Preliminary injunctions have exceedingly high legal bars and are tough to obtain. But in the early rounds, Fubo seems to be effectively arguing its case -- that for decades, Disney, Fox and WBD refused to let pay TV operators bundle just their sports channels, only to turn around and undercut the pay TV industry by doing just that themselves.
Fubo is arguing that Venu's launch will do it "irreparable harm," the kind of hurt that even a large damages verdict won't fix.
