Venu Sports, the upcoming joint streaming venture of Disney-ESPN, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery, is set to cost $42.99 a month when it launches this Fall.
That’s on the highest end of the streaming market, but is in line with Venu’s plans to bring linear feeds of fourteen sports-centric networks to the service without a full pay-TV subscription.
According to Deadline, Fox Corp’s internal forecasts call for this stand-alone offering to gain five million subscribers in its first five years. Increased distribution fees from their pay-TV partners also hopes to add more revenue streams.
ESPN is still planning to launch a flagship stand-alone streaming service in a year or so, but its pricing is under wraps. Warners, meanwhile, has a sports subscription tier on Max.
One thing that could impact potential customers is if Warner Bros. Discovery loses rights to the NBA which is expected after the 2024-25 season.
The league announced last month around $77 billion in rights deals over 11 years with Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon. Warners is suing the NBA in relation to that.
Another issue is missing major sports like a good chunk of the NFL along with college sports, soccer, golf and others which are part of NBCU or Paramount Global who aren’t involved with Venu.
