Venu Sports, the joint venture sports streaming service formed by US media giants Disney, Fox Corp, and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), has unveiled its pricing structure ahead of a scheduled launch this fall.
The service will be available at a launch price of $42.99 per month. Users signing up for Venu’s launch price will be able to receive the service for that same price for 12 months.
Venu will offer coverage of live sports events from all the major professional sports leagues and top college conferences.
The key sports properties with live games and events to be offered by Venu include American football’s NFL, NBA and WNBA (basketball), MLB (baseball), NHL (ice hockey), Formula 1 (motor racing), FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championship, FA Cup, Copa América, MLS, Bundesliga, Eredivisie, and LaLiga (soccer), all four tennis grand slams, PGA Tour and Masters (golf), UFC and PFL (MMA), and college sports.
Venu will also offer top cycling events, every game of the Premiere Lacrosse League, coverage of Major League Rugby, and all three of horse racing’s Triple Crown events.
The streaming service will provide access to 14 live sports channels and a library of on-demand content from the collective companies’ portfolios of sports networks and the ESPN+ platform.
Venu is set to combine the sports streaming property portfolios of Disney, Fox, and WBD and control over 50% of live sports broadcasts in the US both regionally and nationally.
Subscribers to Venu will have access to linear sports networks, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNews, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV, as well as ESPN+.
Pete Distad, chief executive of the upcoming Venu Sports service, has said: “With an impressive portfolio of sports programming, Venu will provide sports fans in the US with a single destination for watching many of the most sought-after games and events.
“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.”
Despite not launching yet, Venu Sports is not without its controversies, with rival sports streamer FuboTV earlier this month leading a coalition of broadcasters, network carriers, and public interest groups in signing a letter to Congress demanding hearings about the venture.
The letter called on members of Congress from the Senate Commerce Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee, House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee, to hold hearings about pay-TV competitiveness.
After hiring Distad as CEO in March, Venu recently announced several additional appointments to fill out its senior leadership team.
The new hires include Brian Borkowski as chief marketing officer, Tim Connolly (chief business officer), Amit Dudakia (senior vice president and head of product), Skarpi Hedinsson (chief technology officer), and Gautam Ranji (chief financial officer).
The Venu Sports name was revealed in May ahead of its expected launch in an app that will come with the potential to bundle it with the Disney+ service, Fox’s Hulu, or WBD’s Max streaming services.
