DirecTV has told the Justice Department that the settlement clearing the way for the launch of the Venu sports streaming service—a joint venture between The Walt Disney Co., Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery—will give the studios an undue competitive advantage in the sports streaming marketplace.
When the launch of Venu was announced last year, Fubo—a virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) that focuses on live sports—filed a lawsuit against the studios over anticompetitive concerns. On Dec. 16, a federal judge ruled against the studio’s attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed. Three weeks later, the studios said they had settled their differences with Fubo, making way for the launch of Venu.
As part of the settlement, announced Monday (Jan. 6), Disney, Fox and WBD will make an aggregate cash payment to Fubo of $220 million. In addition, Disney has committed to provide a $145 million term loan to Fubo in 2026 as part of the transaction. In addition, Disney will acquire a 70% majority stake in Fubo and combine it with Disney’s Hulu + Live TV MVPD service.
In its letter to the DOJ, DirecTV used the department’s own words when it issued a preliminary injunction in favor of FuboTV.
“Defendants have paid Plaintiff to ensure cooperation from an aggrieved competitor, but the settlement does nothing to resolve the underlying antitrust violations at issue,” the letter read. ”Instead, this settlement restores ‘an anticompetitive runway for the JV Defendants to control the future of the live pay TV market.’ ”
DirecTV said it is joining “nonparty EchoStar Corporation’s request that the Court preserve its legal and factual findings given the significant public interests at stake.” DirecTV announced its intention to merge with EchoStar last year but dropped its bid in November, citing its board’s concerns over debt that would have been incurred.
“The Court concluded that the Venu joint venture—and the exclusive right to license unbundled sports networks that it would enjoy—would allow Defendants to ‘drive out competitors’ like DirecTV from the live pay TV market, ‘all to the detriment of consumers and competition,’ ” DirecTV told the DOJ. “The Department of Justice agreed that the launch of Venu would ‘lessen … current competition by giving Defendants a path to collective dominance and foreclosing Venu’s rivals.’ ”
DirecTV added that the settlement “clears the path for Venu to launch unencumbered by removing the injunction the Court imposed to preliminarily prevent the immediate and irreparable harms the JV launch presents,” adding that it is one of “several non-parties that expressed ‘grave concerns’ ” about the impact Venu would have on competition for sports programming, given that Venu would “offer content in a manner that [the Defendants] do not allow DirecTV or other distributors to offer to consumers.”
DirecTV accused the three studios of attempting to buy their way out of the DOJ's injunction.
“The preliminary injunction has protected consumers and distributors alike from the JV Defendant’s scheme to ‘capture demand,’ ‘suppress’ potentially competitive sports bundles, and impose consumer price hikes. By this settlement, Defendants pay off and seek to subsume the very competitor that raised these antitrust violations to the Court. However, Defendants cannot purchase their way out of the antitrust violations.”
DirecTV said it “continues to evaluate its options with respect to the joint venture, the parties’ settlement, Defendants’ tying practices and other anticompetitive harms, and it joins EchoStar in requesting that the Court reject any effort by the Defendants to vacate any prior rulings or findings in this case.”
