Advertisements for Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox’s sports streaming business, hung at the Aug. 16, 2024 at the Fever Festival event in New York City.
Jessica Golden | CNBC
venu completed before Venu completes, Fox. ,, Disney and Warner Bros. Discover Always drawing ways of how to do it alone in live motion streams.
Last month’s media giant Cancel Faced with headwinds, including cost sensitivity and legal challenges, Venu’s launch – a planned direct-to-consumer streaming.
The joint venture initially plans to launch the platform ahead of the 2024 NFL season.
But when it debuted Prevent In the case of a U.S. judge, the two companies returned to the mapping committee and, despite appeals from the decision, decided to move forward alone.
As competition increases, investors have been eager to hear the next steps for each company and provide churn for streaming subscribers and traditional TV bundling customers. While Disney’s ESPN has gained a foothold in streaming live sports, Venu is a bigger part of the future for Fox and WBD.
In recent weeks, each company has been detailing their plans. Disney’s ESPN and WBD’s MAX seem to add more weight behind already announced or existing platforms. Meanwhile, Fox is stuck in direct-to-consumer streaming.
Disney will shift its focus to the direct-to-consumer ESPN streaming platform, an yet-unnamed flagship app separate from ESPN+ and is already at work before Venu collapses. ESPN’s flagship app is expected to launch in the fall, and recently CNBC Report It will add some user-generated content to attract younger audiences.
This week, WBD executives doubled their existing strategies behind streaming service Max.
On Wednesday, the company announced that it would be at no extra cost, including sports and news, at the standard and advanced level of Max. Initially, the WBD program charged an additional fee for sports. It is not clear whether the reversal is directly related to the end of Venu. Including live sports in the standard maximum cost has been part of the WBD’s larger strategy discussion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Unlock
WBD CEO David Zaslav said on Thursday’s revenue call with investors that one of the main drivers behind Vinu was to put the large sports library in one place. He seems to regret losing a single sports-focused app, reaffirming his belief that bundled content is the best value proposition for consumers and removing the confusion of finding your favorite league or team.
“It’s not a good consumer experience, and value creation over the past 50 years has almost always followed a better consumer experience,” Zaslav said on Thursday.
Finding the best value in a bundle has long been Fox’s claim when he stayed away from the streaming war.
Fox won the biggest swing after sitting off the court with its own streaming platform’s plans. The company plans to launch an app that offers news and sports by the end of this year.
The company announced Thursday that it hired Pete Distad, formerly in charge of Venu, who directly operated its direct consumer streaming service.
Earlier this week, at an investor meeting, Fox CFO Steve Tomsic said the upcoming strategy for streaming services should not be seen as a strategy shift, noting that Fox is not trying to pursue (stream) dreams Netflix Disney, Peacock and Paramount+ are all chasing. That’s not our game. ”
Tomsik said Fox had removed Fox from the game’s entertainment assets sold to Disney in 2019, a key component of the major streaming platform. He added that streaming is “powerless to consumers” due to slices and slices on different platforms.
But rampant cout rope cuts prompted Fox to enter streaming games.
“The reality is that when we sit here today, there are more of the 50 million households in the United States,” Tomsk said this week.
Sports cost
Live sports play a key role for media companies as content that attracts the biggest audience. This is true for traditional TV ratings and streaming platforms that seek to grow their subscribers.
In response, the cost of sports rights has surged, and media companies have recently become more methodical in choosing to spend money.
Last week, ESPN broke away from its long-term relationship with MLB, partly because the price per game is getting harder to prove.
Last year, WBD’s Turner Sports lost NBA games rights from the 2025-2026 season, but did gain some new rights, including some college football games and the French Open.
WBD’s Zaslav also noted on Thursday’s earnings call with investors that the company wouldn’t necessarily pay for more sports rights.
“There are some sports rights that we can look at on opportunism and say we can really pay off,” Zaslav said on a phone call on Thursday. “But you know, we don’t need any sports anywhere in the world to support our business anymore. If we think that will enhance our business. We’ll buy sports. And it will become more difficult … (because) the price of some of these prices being paid.”
At an investor meeting in December, Tomsic of Fox developed a similar sentiment about sports rights.
Tomsic said that while sports are the “basic” of Fox, especially the NFL, college football and football, the company has “in and out” in recent years. As an example, he stressed that Fox has abandoned the NFL Thursday Night Football, American Golf and most recently WWE.
When Fox thought that the sports combination made sense, Toms said the company looked size Audience and potential advertising revenue.
“We took a pretty firm view of them, so we’ll see the right sports,” Tomsic said in December.
Disclosure: Peacock is a streaming service of NBCUniversal, a parent company of CNBC.
