Venu Sports will be priced out of the gate at $42.99, a price point that will undercut the sports-focused — and frustrated — virtual MVPD operator partners of the streaming joint venture's backers.
Venu, a JV between The Walt Disney Co., Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery that will live-stream the companies’ linear sports channels, is also offering a free seven-day trial.
The only major announcement left for the JV is a street date.
“With an impressive portfolio of sports programming, Venu will provide sports fans in the U.S. with a single destination for watching many of the most sought-after games and events,” Venu Sports CEO Pete Distad said. “We’re building Venu from the ground up for fans who want seamless access to watch the sports they love, and we will launch at a compelling price point that will appeal to the cord cutter and cord never fans currently not served by existing pay TV packages.”
Venu is promising access to 14 live sports channels "and an expansive library of on-demand content from the collective companies’ portfolios of sports networks and ESPN Plus," the JV's backers said.
Included in the mix will be ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNEWS, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS and truTV.
Live games will originate from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, WNBA, NCAA Division I football and basketball, U.S. and international soccer, combat sports, Grand Slam tennis, championship golf and IndyCar, NASCAR and Formula 1 auto racing, among other sports sources.
Popular studio programming will include ESPN’s SportsCenter, First Take, Get Up!, College GameDay and The Pat McAfee Show; Fox’s Fox NFL Sunday, The Herd With Colin Cowherd and First Things First; and TNT’s Inside the NBA.
Of course, the latter is a sticking point, with Warner Bros. Discovery having filed a lawsuit last week against the NBA in a long-shot bid to keep the league on TNT after its current national TV deal runs out after the 2024-25 season.
And speaking of lawsuits, the Venu companies finally filed a response this week in the antitrust complaint filed against the JV by vMVPD operator Fubo.
“Because Fubo does nothing different or better than other companies, it has long struggled to stay afloat in a highly competitive market,” the JV partners said in their response.
The defendants also called Fubo a “weak competitor.”
Certainly, out of the gate, Venu would seem to be competing with its virtual MVPD partners most closely.
Fubo offers every channel in the Venu portfolio, and about 180 other linear networks, in a base package costing consumers $80 a month before taxes and fees.
Notably, Dish Network's Sling TV also delivers all of the Venu channels, and 66 other networks, in a $60-a-month package (sans taxes and fees) that can be canceled at any time.
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