ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have set a price tag on their upcoming standalone sports streaming service.
The service, named Venu Sports, will cost $42.99 monthly after a seven-day free trial, the company said Thursday. Subscribers will lock in that monthly price for a year and can cancel at any time – and will be able to bundle Venu Sports with other services such as Disney+, Hulu or Max.
The service, which targets viewers who don't have a traditional pay-TV subscription, is expected to launch this fall with 14 live sports channels, plus on-demand programs from ESPN+ and the other sports networks' archives.
"With an impressive portfolio of sports programming, Venu will provide sports fans in the U.S. with a single destination for watching many of the most sought-after games and events," Venu Sports CEO Pete Distad said in a press release announcing the pricing. Distad, who helped launch Apple TV+ at Apple and was part of the original team at Hulu, joined the joint venture in March.
Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN, which is a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, announced the joint venture in February.
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"We're building Venu from the ground up for fans who want seamless access to watch the sports they love, and we will launch at a compelling price point that will appeal to the cord cutter and cord never fans currently not served by existing pay TV packages," he said.
Venu Sports will have action from all of the major sports leagues including MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL and WNBA, MLS and NWSL, as well as other U.S. and international men's and women's soccer coverage. College sports will include NCAA football, NCAA men's and women's basketball, motor sports including NASCAR and Formula 1 events, Grand Slam tennis, golf, boxing and MMA.
Also included: All three of horse racing's Triple Crown events, cycling, the Premiere Lacrosse League, coverage of Major League Rugby.
Venu subscribers will have be able to watch ABC, ESPN, ESPN+, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, Fox, FS1, FS2, The ACC Network, The SEC Network, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS, and truTV. Venu will broadcast live linear feeds of networks such as ABC and TBS, so subscribers will get programming beyond sports, too.
Venu Sports currently doesn't have NFL games broadcast on CBS or NBC, which broadcasts Sunday Night Football. Other streaming services have some NFL broadcasts, too: Thursday Night Football is streamed on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix has two NFL games on Christmas Day this year: the Kansas City Chiefs at Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens at Houston Texans.
You won't likely see the Olympics on Venu Sports as NBC has paid for the rights through 2032. And every other year, the men’s basketball Final Four games are broadcast on CBS, which alternates rights to the games annually with TBS through 2032.
While the service currently has the media rights to the NBA with TNT, the league approved a deal with Amazon, ESPN and NBC to begin in the 2025-2026 season, so it will likely lose some NBA coverage.
Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a lawsuit against the NBA to keep its rights to broadcast NBA games.
The changing sports media rights landscape will be a challenge for Venu Sports and for viewers trying to find make the right streaming subscription choices.
For instance, YouTube TV, which costs $72.99 monthly (a current special gets you a $64.99 monthly price for your first four months), has 100-plus channels including CBS, NBC, ESPN and NFL Network, all of which have NFL games. Out-of-market NFL games are available separately on NFL Sunday Ticket, which Google won the rights to and can be bundled with YouTube TV for $100 in savings.
"The needle Venu, the new sports streamer, has to thread: Find people who will pay $43 a month for lots of sports but not all of the NFL – but who don't want to pay $73 a month for all sports and all of the NFL," said Peter Kafka, chief correspondent for Business Insider, in a post on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.
Contributing: Jarrett Bell, Gary Levin, and Brent Schrotenboer.
Follow Mike Snider on X and Threads: @mikesnider & mikegsnider.
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