As far as I’m concerned (and now a federal judge agrees), Venu, a sports streaming outlet jointly owned by the Disney Grooming Syndicate, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), and Fox, is nothing less than a monopoly out to recreate on streaming the godless cable and satellite TV (CSTV) bundle that serves as affirmative action for greedy, left-wing, multinational entertainment companies.
This “bundling” scam is the most serious part of the lawsuit. In their reports, though, much of the corporate media either failed to understand this, or glossed over it. But that’s the real goal here. Disney, WBD, and Fox want to use Venu as a way to force providers — including streaming providers — to carry and pay for (and force you to pay for) their shitty networks no one watches, like CNN, the Disney Channel, etc.
Some background…
What we have here are three mega-corporations combining their corrupt superpowers to offer Venu at $42.99 a month. By combining, Venu will offer the following:
[G]ames from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA, NASCAR and college sports, as well as golf, tennis and soccer. Besides games, there will be studio shows, pre- and post-game programming and access to ESPN’s 30 for 30 library, ESPN Films and documentaries from Fox Sports Films.
In addition, there will be sports programming from 14 live networks: ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS, truTV, and even ESPN+, which is ESPN’s streaming service.
How the hell is anyone supposed to compete with that?
Imagine if all of your local food stores ganged up with Walmart and Costco into a single chain. Do you think food prices would go up or down? Of course prices would increase. Without competition, you’d be paying $9 for a gallon of milk.
Imagine if all but one of America’s oil companies combined to create one big chain of gas stations. Do you think gas prices would go up or down? Of course they would go up. Without competition, you’d be paying $14 for a gallon of gas.
That is exactly what Disney, Fox, and WBD are attempting to do. Oh, they claim that once they essentially corner the live sports market with an introduction price of $42.99 they will not irrationally raise prices. We know that’s a lie. How do we know that? Because these same fascist corporations have been irrationally raising prices for decades on CSTV. Good heavens, their own streaming services keep going up in price. That $42.99 will last as long as tears in the rain, and will last as long as it takes to put FuboTV into bankruptcy, which will only allow Venu to further corner the live sports market.
And it was FuboTV that filed this antitrust suit against Disney, WBD, and Fox in the United States District Court Southern District of New York, and won this injunction.
For those who don’t know, FuboTV is a streaming service that launched in 2015 dedicated mostly to offering live sports programming. In my area, Fubo’s cheapest plan costs $79.99 a month and offers 191 channels. So, of course, that $42.99 Venu plan will wipe out Fubo. That’s the whole idea.
From Judge Margaret Garnett’s ruling from FuboTV Inc., et al., v. The Walt Disney Company, et al. [emphasis added throughout]:
When it comes to live sports programming, the J[oint] V[enture] Defendants [i.e., Disney, WBD, Fox] dominate. Together, they own over 60% of the telecast rights to nationally broadcast live sports, and an even larger share of the most-watched sports like football and basketball and the most-watched events like playoff or championship games. Fubo, like all other TV distributors, must therefore contract with one or more of the JV Defendants if they want to offer customers even the most basic array of live sports content. [Emphasis added]
And now we get to what this is really about. By all but cornering the live sports programming so many consumers desire, Disney, WBD, and Fox can salvage the CSTV bundling scam that keeps networks no one watches alive by moving it to streaming:
But Fubo claims that its original goal of providing a streaming service focused on live sports has been hampered or thwarted by restrictive terms in the contracts with the television programming networks, including the JV Defendants. Among these complaints is the claim that the contracts force Fubo to carry (and pay for) unwanted non-sports networks that its customers rarely watch, as a condition of securing the rights to carry must-have sports channels. In the pay TV industry, this practice is called “bundling.” … Due to these bundling practices, Fubo says it has effectively been morphed into the opposite of its original vision: a “bloated” bundle of channels, not unlike every other multi-channel TV distributor, with little choice but to charge steep prices to its customers just to stay afloat and cover its licensing costs. After the JV was announced as offering consumers the first “unbundled” sports-focused multi-channel streaming service that Fubo (and others in the market) had long strived to be, Fubo initiated this antitrust action and moved for an injunction to temporarily block its launch. [Emphasis added]
In other words, if a streaming service like Fubo (or any other provider) wants to offer any of the sports programming that Venu owns the licenses to (and Venu owns most of it), they will be forced to carry “unwanted non-sports networks that its customers rarely watch,” like CNN and the Disney Grooming Channel.
You see, since 2015, some 30 million households have canceled their CSTV. That adds up to billions lost in carrier fees for these entertainment companies. Some six million are expected to cancel this year. Everyone is moving to streaming, so these entertainment companies want to recreate the bundle on streaming. The best way to do that is to use the leverage of live sports programming.
More:
For example, in a hypothetical agreement between Fubo and Disney, a minimum penetration requirement of 85% for Nat Geo Wild (a Disney-owned entertainment channel) would mean that Fubo is contractually obligated to distribute the Nat Geo Wild channel to 85% of all Fubo subscribers and pay the corresponding affiliate fees for Nat Geo Wild regardless of the number of subscribers who actually watch the channel. Programmers can also require that their channels be bundled with competitor channels: requiring, for example, that a distributor include a minimum number of other children’s entertainment channels in any package that includes Cartoon Network, or requiring that if a distributor offers any package containing any other children’s entertainment channel, that package must also include Cartoon Network. [Emphasis added]
…
And because of their market power and the undisputed value of their products, the JV Defendants have significant leverage in carriage negotiations with distributors. Their sports content enables them not only to charge high license fees, but also secure favorable distribution and contractual provisions pertaining to their non-sports networks as well. [Emphasis added]
In other words, if Fubo or any other streamer wants the rights to broadcast live sports programming licensed to Disney, WBD, or Fox, even though Fubo would prefer to be a sports-only streamer and keep its costs down, Fubo can be forced to offer, pay for, and force its streaming customers to pay for networks like NatGeo and the Cartoon Network… No one watches those networks — and that’s the affirmative action I’m talking about… That’s why your CSTV bill is so outrageously expensive.
This federal judge gets it.
Venu is nothing less than a monopoly, a wolf in sheep’s clothing to force streaming outlets to recreate the horrors of the CSTV bundle, which means you and I pay for dozens of networks we never watch.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.