Disney, Warner, Fox Press For Quick Appeal of Streaming Sports Venture Shutdown
variety.comBrian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery just want to get their new streaming sports venture on the field of play.
The three media giants pressed the courts for a fast appeal of the shutdown of the their Venu sports streamer Monday, noting that they had already spent $74 million on the joint venture and that the courts had “taken the extraordinary action” of blocking the debut of “a new, consumer-friendly product only weeks before it was set to launch.” The appeal filing, made in the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, comes just ten days after a judge in U.S. District Court barred the trio from launching the new property after complaints from FuboTV, a sports-focused streaming service that alleged the launch of Venu would put it out of business.
The judge found that Fubo would likely prevail on claims that the new broadband entity would “substantially lessen competition and restrain trade.” Fubo launched in 2015 as a start-up focused on streaming sports programming. “Appellants are losing tens of millions of dollars that they have invested in a start-up business that has been blocked from coming to market, dozens of employees who were hired to work for Venu are left in limbo, and consumers are denied access to the innovative new product that Venu would have provided and the increased competition that would result from a new product offering,” the three large media companies said in their legal filing.
Read more on variety.com