Partners say they won’t move forward with launching Venu Sports

Venu Sports, a planned virtual MVPD offering between Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, is being scrapped.

The announcement comes after the joint venture announced it had reached a settlement with FuboTV that would have seen Venu become part of Hulu + Live TV but with Venu and Fubo still sold separately.

“After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service. In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels. We are proud of the work that has been done on Venu to date and grateful to the Venu staff, whom we will support through this transition period,” a statement issued by the partners Jan. 10, 2025, read.

It’s not immediately clear if the Venu partners were contemplating abandoning the project altogether when news of the settlement was announced.

The Hulu + Live TV and Fubo partnership and Disney’s investment in Fubo will still happen, a rep confirmed, though Venu will obviously not be available to purchase separately. 

Venu Sports was supposed to launch in the fall of 2025 and would have essentially been a bundle of the linear feeds of ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNews, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS and truTV as well as access to ESPN+. 

The idea was to create a so-called “skinny” TV package focused largely on one genre of content (though there are other types of shows mixed into the networks that were slated to be part of Venu, particularly WBD’s, and there were no plans to black out non-sports content).

Venu hit a big snag in 2024, however, when Fubo sued, citing antitrust concerns, some of which resurfaced this week as other pay TV providers and legal scholars noted those legal issues could still be a concern despite the settlement deal, which did not directly address whether or not a service such as Venu would be anticompetitive. 

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Venu’s launch was stalled after an injunction was issued in 2024, so the service missed its plan fall 2024 launch — and now that launch will never come.

According to reports, Disney is said to have been especially keen to kill the Venu venture as it reviewed its options and changes in the media landscape since the idea was hatched.

Disney will also relaunch its ESPN+ streaming service to include linear feeds of its networks, which includes ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, and ESPNews, a factor that is likely to have cooled its attitude toward Venu.

As of mid-2024, Venu had hired about 150 people to work solely on the project, including a large C-suite, according to multiple reports.

These staffers will presumably lose their jobs with the JV’s closure being effective immediately. It’s not clear if they would be offered severance or career counseling services, though it’s likely they could still apply for any open jobs within the sports operations of the respective partners.