Disney-Fox-WBD Streaming Venture Venu Sports Fires Back At Fubo In Antitrust Case, Dubbing Itself A “Pro-Competitive” Response To Cord-Cutting

deadline.com:

Venu Sports, the joint sports streaming venture backed by Disney, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery, has laid out its case to a federal appeals court, requesting permission to resume its plans to launch.

The company’s brief, filed late Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, comes months after pay-TV operator Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the media giants of mounting Venu as a way to put Fubo and other distributors out of business.

Last month, a judge in New York stunned the media business by siding with Fubo, granting its request for a preliminary injunction barring Venu’s from proceeding with its debut. “Programmers are caught in a perfect storm: content costs are rising while revenue is shrinking, both due to increased competition,” Venu said in the brief. “To weather this storm, programmers have taken steps to diversify their distribution methods.” (Read the full brief HERE.) The appeal mainly concerns the injunction and Venu’s ability to begin operating as a commercial entity.

The underlying lawsuit, however, has broader implications. Venu stakeholders, and by extension Comcast/NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and other programmers, face potentially damaging legal exposure as they continue to juggle streaming with legacy linear businesses beset by secular decline.