Venu gets killed, but something else will take its placeVenu gets killed, but something else will take its place

Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) said they are going to discontinue their sports streaming joint venture called Venu.

"After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service," the media companies said in a statement. "In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels. We are proud of the work that has been done on Venu to date and grateful to the Venu staff, whom we will support through this transition period."

The move comes after a busy week. First, Disney on Monday said it would merge its Hulu + Live TV business with Fubo, a sports-oriented virtual multiannual video programming distributor (vMVPD) that had issues with Venu. Fubo sued Venu's founders on antitrust grounds – but Disney's deal with Fubo settled that litigation.

However, just days later, EchoStar and DirecTV told a district court judge that the new deal between Disney and Fubo didn't fix Venu's underlying antitrust violations. 

Those ongoing issues appear to have ultimately scuttled Venu.

What's next

"Venu did not work due to antitrust issues," wrote Blair Levin, a policy advisor to New Street Research and a former high-level FCC official, in a note to investors Friday, hours after the Venu shut-down announcement.

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But Levin argued that the difficult market conditions that led to the creation of Venu remain. Specifically, consumers continue to drift away from traditional linear TV and toward streaming services – and sports content will inevitably follow this trend.

As a result, Levin predicted that big media companies will likely pursue some Venu-like strategy in the future. "The economic pressure that led to the creation of Venu will remain a driver of other efforts to reconfigure media," he wrote. 

Levin noted that antitrust policy will also continue to play some kind of role in defining the parameters of what will happen next. "There is no way to know for sure what is or is not acceptable in this rapidly changing media landscape until cases are tried," he noted.

Venu was originally envisioned almost a year ago to offer a lineup of more than a dozen channels (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNEWS, Fox, FS1, FS2, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS and truTV) and ESPN+ starting at $42.99 per month.