Fubo Subscriber Sues Disney for Antitrust Violations After Venu Shutdown
After Disney pulled the plug on sports-streaming service Venu last week, a Fubo subscriber filed a proposed class action suit in New York federal court on Tuesday, alleging that the media giant has violated antitrust laws as both a content supplier and a distributor.
The suit states that because Disney owns ESPN, it “has a chokehold over sports programming in the United Staters” and “extract monopoly rents” forcing streaming services to carry non-ESPN content that they don’t want.
“These anticompetitive tactics restrain competition from rivals to Disney’s Hulu in the SLPTV market and force independent streaming services such as Fubo to charge higher prices to their customers than they would in a free market,” the complaint reads.
The suit further states, “Fubo readily admits that it had to nearly double the prices it charges to consumers as a result of Defendant’s anticompetitive conduct. These higher prices, which consumers (such as Fubo consumers) pay for streaming platforms, harm both consumers and competition alike.”
Disney announced on Friday that it was merging Hulu with rival Fubo, effectively ending the planned Venu service from Disney Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.
A court previously blocked Venu’s release, stating that the bundle “uniformly and systematically imposed on each distributor in the live pay TV industry except the JV, preventing any other distributor from offering a multi-channel sports-focused streaming service.”
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