Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav Talks New Sports Joint Venture With Disney and Fox
In his first public statement on the planned joint venture with The Walt Disney Company and Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said the new sports-centric streaming service will increase his company’s reach, not add more cord-cutters.
“We think it coexists quite effectively” with traditional linear television, Zaslav said. “We don’t see a lot of people unsubscribing to cable in order to get this.”


Photo: Variety.com
According to the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO, the joint venture partners will be targeting sports fans who currently do not pay for live games.
The trio “have a very rich target” of 60 million sports fans who are not currently part of the pay-TV ecosystem.


Disney/Fox/Comcast/Ringer illustration
‘“We’ll be able to go after those we are missing,” Zaslav said.
Reducing Friction
On his company’s earnings call today, Zaslav said the goal of the new joint venture will be to reduce friction in fan’s viewing experience.


Photo: Disney
“Today, when people are thinking, ‘What channel should I watch? What channel is my sport on?’ You’ll be able to go to this new product, this new app-based product, and if you watch the baseball playoffs, you’ll watch all of them and you won’t be thinking, ‘What channel is it on?’ Hockey, you’ll watch all of the hockey playoffs, right through the Stanley Cup.”
The Joint Venture Has Elicited Strong Reactions
Since the joint venture’s announcement earlier this year, the new sports-centric streaming service has dominated talk in the entertainment industry.
While the partners are confident that they will be able to carve out a new niche in streaming, others have been more pessimistic about the joint venture.


Photo: Deadline
Both Paramount CEO Robert M. Bakish and Charter Communications CEO Christopher Winfrey have stated that they did not believe that the joint venture partners had completed enough sports programming to make the new service feasible.
Fubo CEO David Gandler, meanwhile, slammed the new joint venture as a “sports cartel.”


Photo: Fubo
“Their proposed venture is, we believe, just the latest example of this sports cartel’s attempt to block and steal Fubo’s vision of what a sports-streaming bundle should look like, resulting in billions of dollars in damages to our business,” Gandler said.
What’s Next?
Earlier today, former Apple executive Peter Distad was officially named CEO of the new joint venture.


David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
The next big question will be the price point. Until the cost of the new streamer is known, it will be tough to gauge how big the new service’s clientele base is.