Disney, Fox, and WBD give up on controversial sports streaming app Venu

While Fubo’s lawsuit against the JV appears to have been settled, other rivals on sports television appear intent on continuing to fight Venu.

In a letter dated January 9 (PDF) To U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Garnett of the Southern District of New York, which granted Fubo’s preliminary injunction against Venu, Michael Hartman, general counsel and chief external affairs officer for DirectTV, wrote that Fubo’s settlement “does nothing to resolve the underlying antimonopoly issues.” violations in question.” Hartman asked the court to uphold the preliminary injunction against the app.

“The preliminary injunction protected both consumers and distributors from Defendant JV’s scheme to ‘capture demand’, ‘suppress’ potentially competitive sports packages and raise consumer prices,” the letter said, adding that DirectTV will continue to explore its options regarding the JV “and other anticompetitive harm.”

Likewise, Pantelis Michalopoulos, legal counsel for EchoStar Corporation, which owns Dish, wrote a letter (PDF) Garnett on January 7, claiming that members of the joint venture “were paid off from violating antitrust laws.” Michalopoulos added that the JV defendants “should not be able to pay to overturn a carefully reasoned court decision” to temporarily block the Venu launch.

In addition to Fubo, DirecTV and Dish, ASA connects (A trade association for small and medium-sized telecommunications service providers) has publicly expressed concerns about Venu. The NFL was also said he was concerned about the consequences of the idea.

Now the three giants behind Venu are giving up and abandoning an app that could have attracted scores of subscribers tired of running through apps, channels and subscriptions in search of all the sports content they wanted. But they also avoid a lot of litigation and potential backlash in the process.