ESPN Accused of Pilfering Proprietary Technology in New $200 Million Lawsuit
The Oakland-based tech startup SportsBubble has filed an explosive new lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, accusing Disney and ESPN of stealing its proprietary technology.
According to SportsBubble, ESPN entered into bad-faith negotiations with the company to pillage trade secrets from their WatchSports app.
ESPN
For those who may not know, WatchSports aggregates streaming apps to provide consumers with options for watching live sports. In an ever-changing media environment, it has become increasingly complex to determine which platforms host live sporting events. WatchSports makes this easy by presenting customers with their options for each event.
The Negotiations
According to a report by Sportico in 2021, ESPN showed interest in partnering with the company. The potential deal necessitated WatchSports sharing its proprietary technology with ESPN, which could then evaluate the app.
SportsBubble says that after five months of negotiations, it “had agreed in principle” with ESPN on an affiliate marketing partnership that would have seen ESPN+ sports events listed on WatchSports. This would have allowed users to connect directly to ESPN content.
Photo: SportsBubble
As part of the deal, ESPN pledged to share its application programming interface (API), which allows different applications.
In exchange, ESPN demanded that SportsBubble share the technical interface behind WatchSports.
ESPN
According to the lawsuit, the company shared trade secrets with ESPN and Disney, including the methods that SportsBubble uses to communicate and integrate APIs of other streaming services, internal architecture and technology, and other internal functions.
Deal and Delay
By February 2022, the deal was essentially reached and all that remained was for ESPN to deliver the API for ESPN+ to SportsBubble to facilitate the integration into WatchSports.
According to SportsBubble, ESPN claimed that there were technological hurdles delaying the delivery of the API. Then, in March 2023, ESPN announced the Where to Watch product, which SportsBubble claims is “identical” to WatchSports.
Photo: Watch Sports
Following the ESPN announcement, SportsBubble says it lost its lead investor and “other sports stakeholders who were reluctant to partner with a new company that would now be directly competing with ESPN.”
The Accusations
The new lawsuit accuses ESPN of violating the Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and other state trade secret statutes. Additionally, the company is accusing the network of breaching the NDAs.
Photo: Miriam-Webster
They are seeking $200 million in damages.
