Fubo said it has filed an antitrust lawsuit against The Walt Disney Co., Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery claiming that the sports streaming venture they plan is stealing Fubo’s playbook.
Fubo is seeking to enjoin the joint venture or, require the defendants to offer economic parity of licensing terms and pay substantial damages.
The Disney-Fox-WBD venture would stream linear channels that carry sports programming for about $50 a month, competing with Fubo for cord-cutting sports fans.
The new service will hurt competition and inflate prices for viewers, Fubo claims.
Fubo stock plunged after the joint venture was announced.
Fubo alleges that the sports content rights holders have made it difficult to launch a sports streaming service.
“For decades, defendants have leveraged their iron grip on sports content to extract billions of dollars in supra-competitive profits” by engaging in practices causing consumers to pay more for highly popular sports content and resulting in significant damages to both Fubo and its customers,” Fubo said in its complaint.
Fubo alleges that the defendants controlled content through unfair bundling — making distributors include non-sports channels, like Disney Channel or Fox News Channel, in their offerings — and other tactics.
Fubo also charges that Fox, WBD and Disney charge Fubo licensing rates that are 30% to 50% higher than they charge other distributors.
Fubo said it believes it has incurred billions of dollars in damages as a result of the defendants’ actions.
“Each of these companies has consistently engaged in anti-competitive practices that aim to monopolize the market, stifle any form of competition, create higher pricing for subscribers and cheat consumers from deserved choice,“ Fubo co-founder and CEO David Gandler said. “By joining together to exclusively reserve the rights to distribute a specialized live sports package, we believe these corporations are erecting insurmountable barriers that will effectively block any new competitors from entering the market.
“This strategy ensures that consumers desiring a dedicated sports channel lineup are left with no alternative but to subscribe to the defendants’ joint venture,” Gandler said.
