Venu Sports is still dead, but the core of the sports-focused offering remains very much alive.
ESPN and Fox, fierce rivals across much of the sports media landscape, said Monday that they will offer their respective streaming services that are debuting later this month in a bundle that re-creates much of the aborted Venu Sports plan.
The joint streaming offering, available starting Oct. 2, will bring together the direct-to-consumer offering from the Disney-owned ESPN along with Fox One, that network’s streaming service that will combine its sports, news, and entertainment programming. The $39.99 per month price is a $10 discount on the $29.99 unbundled price for ESPN and the $19.99 one for Fox One, a recently unveiled effort that has that network looking to catch up in the streaming wars.
The collaboration shows how important the streaming efforts are to both companies as cord-cutting accelerates, and how much they still believe in the essence of the Venu Sports idea—despite legal challenges that helped thwart it.
After roughly a year of preparation, ESPN, Fox, and fellow Venu Sports partner Warner Bros. Discovery killed plans for the service in January. That move arrived just days after ESPN parent Disney struck a deal with Fubo to acquire a majority interest in the company, settling an antitrust lawsuit, with plans to merge that operation with Disney’s own Hulu + Live TV service. Since then, WBD has unveiled plans to separate into two companies and is not part of this latest effort from ESPN and Fox.
The commitment to the core of the Venu Sports idea also relates to technology and leadership. Some of the prior infrastructure is being repurposed for Fox One, while the service’s CEO, Pete Distad, previously was in the same role for Venu Sports.
Other rival companies such as DirecTV and Comcast have made similar bundle-related moves in a bid to attract sports fans who have either left traditional cable and satellite TV, or never had it.
It Was Foretold
Deals such as this were increasingly expected, particularly after Disney CEO Bob Iger said last week that “there may be opportunities for us to bundle other companies’ sports offerings,” as part of a quarterly earnings report. Along similar lines, Tony Billetter, SVP of strategy and business development for Fox’s DTC business, referred to the ESPN alignment as “our first bundle partner.”
The combined ESPN-Fox offering will particularly be a force in college football and basketball as the two networks have a massive foothold among the major conferences that dominate those sports. Despite that, though, the streaming market for sports content remains disparate, with rival entities such as Paramount+ making major plays for additional programming and Peacock looking to expand its own profile.
The DTC version of ESPN and Fox One will both debut Aug. 21.
