Judge’s Ruling May Ruin Your Fall Sports Streaming TV Plans

Sorry, sports fans. We have some potentially bad news for your live TV streaming plans for the upcoming football season.

Venu Sports, a highly-anticipated sports streaming service that was set to launch in Fall 2024, may not be available to consumers anytime soon. In fact, it may not be available at all.

The joint venture between ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery was dealt a big blow in court on Friday, August 16.

Citing concerns about anticompetitive practices, U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett blocked the launch of Venu Sports by issuing a temporary injunction.

This ruling comes just weeks before the start of football season, which was expected to be the target launch for the streaming service.

That means consumers will have to consider paying more for other live streaming access to the NFL, college football and MLB playoff games that await sports fans in the months ahead.

Fubo TV Is Leading The Charge Against the Launch of Venu Sports

You may be wondering: "Who is doing this and why are they depriving us of cheaper live sports streaming?"

If you step back from your “consumer” perspective on Venu Sports, you can probably see who is upset by this.

Existing live TV streaming services are paying ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery large sums of money to broadcast their channels. And these three former competitors decided to team up to produce a product that would compete with the likes of YouTube TV, Sling TV and Hulu + Live TV for the subscription fees that the live sports broadcasts can produce.

In particular, sports-centric live streaming service Fubo is vehemently opposed to Venu Sports. Upon the announcement of Venu's development back in February, Fubo sued all three companies.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "lawyers for Fubo argued that Venu is anticompetitive because Fox, Warner, and Disney force the service to pay for a broad bundle of general entertainment channels without the ability to handpick only the sport-centric channels it wants to distribute."

Predictably, Fubo was very pleased with the judge’s ruling on Friday.

“Today’s ruling is a victory not only for Fubo but also for consumers,” Fubo CEO David Gandler said via press release. “This decision will help ensure that consumers have access to a more competitive marketplace with multiple sports streaming options.”

Venu Sports issued a release indicating it plans to appeal this decision in hopes of continuing forward with the launch.

What Is Venu Sports?

Venu Sports is an all-sports streaming joint venture by Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN that was set to launch in Fall 2024.

With a planned launch price of $42.99 per month, the concept is to offer sports fans a chance to purchase only the channels they need to watch big sporting events without paying a full service live TV streaming service for a larger package of channels.

Venu’s plan was to provide access to “14 live sports channels and an expansive library of on-demand content from the collective companies’ portfolios of sports networks and ESPN+.”

The list of channels to be included:

1. ESPN
2. ESPN2
3. ESPNU
4. SEC Network
5. ACC Network
6. ESPNEWS
7. ABC
8. FOX
9. FS1
10. FS2
11. Big Ten Network
12. TNT
13. TBS
14. truTV

The subscription is also supposed to provide access to live sports via the ESPN+ streaming service.

In the meantime, you may want to check out our list of free and cheap options for watching football this season.

Were you planning to pay for this sports streaming service? If so, what is your plan to see games this fall while they settle this dispute in court? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the Clark.com community.

The post Judge's Ruling May Ruin Your Fall Sports Streaming TV Plans appeared first on Clark Howard.