Disney Is Facing Another Antitrust Lawsuit Just Days After Settling With Fubo
Just days after pulling the plug on Venu Sports, The Walt Disney Company is now facing a proposed class action lawsuit alleging antitrust violations.
As a quick recap, Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery initially announced the creation of Venu Sports last February, intending to launch the sports-centric streaming service in the fall of 2024.
Those plans were foiled, however, when Fubo sued the joint venture partners. A federal judge sided with the streaming service and granted an injunction that blocked the launch of Venu.


Photo: Disney
As the legal proceedings played out, Venu’s future began to be in doubt.
Disney Settled With Fubo Last Week
Last week, Disney announced it was purchasing a 70% stake in Fubo and combining the service with its own Hulu + Live TV. As part of the agreement, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox agreed to a financial settlement with Fubo, which dropped its suit against the joint venture partners.
Subsequently, Disney and its partners announced that they were canceling the launch of Venu Sports.


Photo: Disney
While it looked like the saga of Venu had finally ended, its legacy is living on in a new class action lawsuit.
Another Antitrust Lawsuit
A Fubo subscriber proposed the antitrust lawsuit in New York federal court today, claiming Disney’s ownership of ESPN “enables it to extract monopoly rents” in the streaming TV market by forcing services to carry other Disney channels in order to access ESPN.
Additionally, the lawsuit continues, ESPN must be included as part of the cheapest package offered to consumers.


Photo: ESPN
“These anticompetitive tactics restrain competition from rivals to Disney’s Hulu in the SLPTV market and force independent streaming services such as Fubo to charge higher prices to their customers than they would in a free market,” the complaint states.
Echos of Fubo
Interestingly, the latest lawsuit echoes the language used by Fubo when it challenged the launch of Venu. Before joining the Disney family, Fubo argued that the joint venture partners essentially forced carriers to purchase less popular channels in order to get access to the must-have sports networks.


Photo: Deadline
The new class action lawsuit builds on this argument.
“Disney’s anticompetitive conduct includes using its dominant share of broadcast licenses for commercially critical sports content to force Fubo to license and broadcast unwanted, expensive, non-sports content,” the complaint continues. “This prevents Fubo from offering the sports-centric package of channels that its customers want.”


Photo: Fubo
As of this writing, Disney has not commented on the latest suit.
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