FUTURE OF SPORTS STREAMING MARKET, CONSUMER OPTIONS UNDER FURTHER SCRUTINY AFTER VENU SPORTS RULING

With the U.S. Open tennis tournament beginning Monday and college football kicking into high gear, this was supposed to be the week when some expected the Venu Sports streaming service to have a soft launch at least.

Instead, the joint venture between ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery has been sidelined by a federal court’s preliminary injunction, and its future is very much up in the air.

The Aug. 16 ruling by United States District Judge Margaret M. Garnett that Fubo was likely to be successful in proving that the joint venture would violate antitrust laws put the brakes on what was an ambitious timeline to get Venu Sports up and running. ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery and Hulu announced their plans to offer a sports streaming service on Feb. 6. They immediately got questions from competitors and sports leagues on how it would work.

Irwin Kishner, co-chair of the Sports Law Group with New York law firm Herrick, said getting the service up and running in less than seven months would be a tall order.

“You can certainly put a deadline to try to get things going. But, I think that was somewhat aspirational as opposed to likely,” Kishner said.

Garnett has scheduled a pretrial conference for Sept. 12. According to a memo Garnett sent to both parties on Monday, if the case goes to trial, the earliest it would begin is late February.

Kishner said he wasn’t surprised about the ruling given the Biden Administration’s priority on antitrust matters.

“Having three of the biggest providers of sports content in one equity, you can certainly make a colorful argument that might thwart competition,” Kishner said.

Venu Sports would include offerings from 14 linear networks — ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS, truTV — as well as ESPN+.