Venu isn’t coming to consumers anytime soon, but Fox Corporation executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch revealed some details about the upcoming sports streamer during a recent panel. While at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference, Murdoch emphasized that Venu isn’t designed to be a cable competitor.
“It’s a tremendous service. It’s designed entirely for the cord-cutters and cord-nevers,” Murdoch said Tuesday. The Fox head also said that comparing the sports streaming service, which is a partnership between Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox, to cable is “a misunderstanding.”
“People haven’t seen it, haven’t been able to actually use it and touch it. It doesn’t look like a cable service, right? It doesn’t look like a bundle of channels,” he explained. “You wouldn’t even use the channel brands to market it. So you’re not going to say, ‘It’s Fox Sports 1 and 2 or ESPN.’ Rather, you say, ‘This is your home of NFL or NBA’ … it’s organized by sport and by what the consumer wants, not by trying to manage what channels my game is on tonight.”
Murdoch also noted that the companies were originally planning to launch the streamer “a few weeks ago” until an injunction was filed against the platform. In mid-August, Fubo was granted a preliminary injunction after filing an antitrust lawsuit against the upcoming streamer in February. Looking ahead, Murdoch said Fox is “very excited” to launch it and that the trio of companies has been granted an expedited hearing appeal on the injunction.
“The important thing is we think it’s pro-consumer, it’s pro-sports fan. It’s at an affordable cost, and it really cleans up a lot of what’s become complicated or broken in the sports rights environment in the United States,” he said. He went on to note that, if you’re a San Francisco 49ers fan, under the current sports setup, you would have to pay around $114 a month and subscribe to around five streamers to watch all the NFL games this season.
“Venu is a way of — at least to a large extent — solving that by having as many rights for the sports fan in one package,” Murdoch said.
During the same event, Murdoch revealed that Fox will be exercising its option to acquire an 18.6% stake in the sports betting company, FanDuel. Fox’s option to invest in FanDuel expires in 2030, giving the company six years to figure out how to invest. The corporation has already started the process with state regulators to license the company as a gaming operator.
“We’re still tremendous believers in sports betting. We think it’s growing into a great business. It also drives engagement with sport,” he said. “We’re not going to leave $2 billion on the table.” Previous projections for the sports betting market have ranged from $30-$45 billion.
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