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Credit: Inside the MagicFeuds between publically traded corporations tend to be dry, paper-work-driven things, but the upcoming fight between sports streaming service FuboTV and the Walt Disney Company is probably going to be something else entirely. At least, when a CEO says something is a “duel to the death,” it sounds pretty dramatic.
FuboTV is a popular sports television service that specializes in streaming live sports; depending on where you are, it could be your go-to app for watching major league baseball, professional football, hockey, soccer, or even Canadian soccer. In the near-decade since its founding, it has filled a niche that larger streaming services like Max and Amazon Prime Video have not yet moved in on and amassed a reported subscriber base of nearly two million worldwide.
Related: After Failures, Disney Pulling Away From Streaming Service
Now, it is being threatened by the corporate Triforce of the Walt Disney Company, Fox Corp., and Warner Bros. Discovery, three of the largest media companies in the world. Here’s an artist’s interpretation of their combined forces:
The three companies recently announced an unprecedented joint venture to consolidate all of their sports properties into a single streaming app, which would almost certainly dominate the market. The prospective streaming app would include content from channels like ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNews, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV, and ESPN+ and cover basically every major and collegiate sports league.
The new, unnamed app (may we suggest DisBroxSports?) is scheduled to premiere this fall, presumably to coincide with the start of professional basketball and football in the United States. However, before that happens, Disney, WBD, and Fox are facing a massive, billion-dollar lawsuit from FuboTV, which claims that the joint venture will “will cause substantial harm to competition and consumers.”
The lawsuit asserts that “Each of these companies has consistently engaged in anticompetitive [sic] practices that aim to monopolize the market, stifle any form of competition, create higher pricing for subscribers and cheat consumers from deserved choice,” essentially arguing that the potential DisBroxSports app will destroy sports fans’ freedoms. Considering that the proposed service will likely cost over $40 a month, maybe they have something there.
But, as strongly worded as the lawsuit might be, FuboTV co-founder and CEO David Gandler is going even harder in the paint (sports!).
In the recent FuboTV Q4 earnings call (via MotleyFool), Gandler responded to a question regarding “monopolistic practice[s] with Big Tech” and whether the company would defend itself with bold words, saying, “I think that this is a duel to the death. It has been when we started this company. We are fighting for consumers.”
Related: Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video Now Available in Single Streaming Bundle
One rarely hears the CEO of a media company saying that the company would die in pursuit of customers, but at this point, what does FuboTV have to lose? While the service may have nearly two million customers worldwide, the Disney+ streaming service has nearly 150 million across the globe, even after losing 12 million at the end of 2023. Even if it manages to block the joint venture between Disney, Fox Corp., and Warner Bros. Discovery, any of those companies could potentially push it out of the sports streaming niche.
The lawsuit between FuboTV and the Triforce is still pending, so we will have to wait and see whether the battle over DisBroxSports leaves any company dead in the dust.
Do you think that a combined live-streaming sports app between those companies would create a monopoly? Give us your legal thoughts in the comments below!