Game On! Disney, Warner Bros Discovery & Fox Pummeled By Fubo TV Antitrust Suit Over Proposed Sports Mega-Streamer
deadline.comThe planned sports streamer team-up between Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Fox may be stuck at the starting line if Fubo TV gets its way in court.
Looking at billions in damages, an antitrust lawsuit filed this morning by the nearly decade old live sports platform aims to stymie the trio’s big bundle move ASAP. “For decades, Defendants have leveraged their iron grip on sports content to extract billions of dollars in supra-competitive profits from distributors and consumers,” the filing by Fubo TV Inc in federal court in New York states. “Defendants earned many of these profits by ‘bundling’ their commercially critical sports content with other, less desirable content—forcing sports fans to purchase channels they did not want.” Read Fubo TV’s antitrust lawsuit against Disney, Warner Bros Discovery & Fox over a newly proposed sports streamer here Fubo TV not only wants cash from its rivals current and potentially future, but they want to whole proposed sports streamer venture shut down by a court order.
If they can’t get that, Fubo are seeking significant restrictions on the new streamer to keep ever escalating sports licensing prices within competitive reach “And once they have combined forces, Defendants’ incentive to exclude Fubo and other rivals will only increase.
If not stopped, Defendants’ JV will substantially increase Defendants’ incentives—both individually and collectively—to deny access and/or charge higher content prices to third-party distributors that depend on access to Defendants’ must-have sports channels, irrevocably reducing competition in the market and harming consumers,” the partially redacted filing from the law firm of Kelloff Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick. “Faced with the threat of
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