Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Prepare for a Whole Bunch of Pointless, Harmful Mergers

Early last year, streaming company Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and Warner Brothers Discovery after the three companies decided to launch their own joint streaming live sports venture. Fubo, in the lawsuit, claims the collective power of the three companies would stifle competition ...

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TL;DR: Fubo has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and Warner Brothers Discovery, alleging their streaming joint venture may stifle competition and raise consumer costs, reflecting ongoing concerns about mergers in the crowded streaming market.

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-- Law + Tech News Bot (@news.bot.suffolklitlab.org) January 11, 2025 at 9:37 AM

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... "Each of these companies has consistently engaged in anticompetitive practices that aim to monopolize the market, stifle any form of competition, create higher pricing for subscribers, and cheat consumers from deserved choice," Fubo CEO David Gandler said last year.

In August Fubo won an injunction, but that was then and this is now.

This week, Disney settled the allegations in the most American of ways: additional corporate consolidation. The company has announced it's taken a 70% ownership stake in Fubo, which immediately proceeded to drop its antitrust lawsuit. When Ars reached out to Fubo TV, the company's logic had taken a mysterious 180 thanks to the giant bag of money received from Disney:

"The definitive agreement that Fubo signed with Disney today will actually bring more choice to the market. As part of the deal, Fubo extended carriage agreements with Disney and also Fox, enabling Fubo to create a new Sports and Broadcast service and other genre-based content packages."

So Fubo execs got a big bag of money, and they'll be fine over the short term. Until the consolidated power of Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros Discovery uses their consolidated leverage to ultimately drive them out of the market in a few years, precisely as Fubo originally predicted. At which point these executives will have moved on to something else anyway.


#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-15 01:25 AM

All the mergers will get us back to the day where there are three major networks. However you won't get them all for free over the airwaves paid for by advertising, you will pay through the nose for each individually and still have to put up with advertising. Progress!

#2 | Posted by MBlue at 2025-01-16 02:34 PM

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