Fox, Warner and ESPN Team Up to Create Sports-Streaming Platform

slugboy

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SunBum said:
I read about this earlier but I can't quite understand what they're doing. I have basic Hulu (not live TV) along with certain ESPN stuff through a bundle with Disney Plus and Fubo now. So now there will be an additional service (Venu) that I'll need to add. What will I be able to get rid of??? This is getting so confusing (purposefully, I'm sure). I was a very early cord cutter and enjoyed several years where I only paid for Netflix (along with Amazon Prime). I'd pickup ESPN when needed through an offer from Sling TV or one of the other streaming services during football season or whatever. But now here I am again paying as much as I once did for cable or satellite and juggling 3, 4 or 5 streaming services... :banghead:
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Hulu live TV and Fubu live tv will be the same service. Maybe it’s named Hulu, maybe it’s Fubu. The stock ticker is FUBU

Fubu will be able to offer a sports package similar to Venu (Fox sports, ESPN, ABC) and leave the rest out. Venu will do about the same thing
 
AugustaSwarm

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Pricing matters a lot for this, and if the price is $40+ I don't see this taking off unless they remove the sport packages from the current platforms (Sling, YouTube TV, etc)
 

yeti92

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slugboy said:
Hulu live TV and Fubu live tv will be the same service. Maybe it’s named Hulu, maybe it’s Fubu. The stock ticker is FUBU

Fubu will be able to offer a sports package similar to Venu (Fox sports, ESPN, ABC) and leave the rest out. Venu will do about the same thing
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I remember my mom buying me some pants once that were made by FUBU. I tried to explain to her what FUBU meant, but she didn't understand.
 
ThatGuy

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slugboy said:
Hulu live TV and Fubu live tv will be the same service. Maybe it’s named Hulu, maybe it’s Fubu. The stock ticker is FUBU

Fubu will be able to offer a sports package similar to Venu (Fox sports, ESPN, ABC) and leave the rest out. Venu will do about the same thing
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Although you're likely spot-on, the above is currently only speculation. From the article, for now they're keeping Fubo and Hulu+Live TV distinct, although they might explore ways to merge them in the future.

(Which is good for me, as I HATE the interface of Hulu+Live TV, and will have to cancel if they merge the two and make me go back).

On the plus side for this whole thing...Fubo currently offers "unlimited DVR" - but ESPN and ABC restrict the number of hours you can have recorded on the Fubo TV DVR. Which (in my case) means you go to watch your recording of the Miami-GT game after the fact, and find it didn't record, and you have to spend hours trying to reach their support to figure out why your Tech games aren't being recorded in spite of showing up as "Recording."

I assume this arrangement was a contract dispute between Fubo and Disney - probably related to Fubo suing and winning an injunction to stop the launch of the proposed streaming platform. Now that Disney has bought Fubo, I would hope that cap on ESPN content will go away.

Regardless, no matter what, I think the end result will be what others have called out - more $ out of our pockets.
 
AlabamaBuzz

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Right now, Hulu +live TV is 82.99, same as YTTV. I'm not sure I would hold out any hope that the FUBO merger would actually bring the price down.

I'm frustrated because like everything else, the prices go up ridiculously - Like, why did it have to go from 72.99 to 82.99? That is a 14% increase ALL AT ONE TIME. I never understand why the increase increments are so large.. It is the same with homeowners insurance right now - it's crazy - 20% increases year to year.

Having YTTV and cable internet is slightly less than I would pay to go back to cable TV, but only slightly at this point. And honestly, there are 2 major drivers of the high prices - local channel broadcast fees and the sports networks, mainly Disney's ESPN channels. I may start to do SLING (or just my Prime and standard HULU for streaming entertainment) when college football season is off, and then go back to one of the major carriers for 4-5 months during the CFB season.
 
gte447f

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SunBum said:
I read about this earlier but I can't quite understand what they're doing. I have basic Hulu (not live TV) along with certain ESPN stuff through a bundle with Disney Plus and Fubo now. So now there will be an additional service (Venu) that I'll need to add. What will I be able to get rid of??? This is getting so confusing (purposefully, I'm sure). I was a very early cord cutter and enjoyed several years where I only paid for Netflix (along with Amazon Prime). I'd pickup ESPN when needed through an offer from Sling TV or one of the other streaming services during football season or whatever. But now here I am again paying as much as I once did for cable or satellite and juggling 3, 4 or 5 streaming services... :banghead:
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yep, juggling multiple streaming services and back paying as much or more than cable tv. And this outcome was so utterly predictable. How about how the various streaming content providers/producers all seem to cross promote/sell each others content on their platforms. Seems like collusion to me.
 

cpf2001

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Used to work in this space. The forty dollar price points were money losers from day one. The long term strategy was never clear to me especially since Disney controlled Hulu by then and fully owned ESPN. So if Hulu TV had gotten big enough to have enough leverage to squeeze channels to try to keep prices down… it’s squeezing the ESPN channels they also own… for non-sports stuff maybe there’s some Hollywood accounting black magic involved but for sports ESPN has LARGE external contracts that are booked for long time periods.

“About the same price as cable” is going to be inevitable for anything that carries the same channels. The bulk of the cost comes from the popular ones so even a “sports only” package will never be that cheap.

I just don’t get “let’s lose money to get customers and then piss them off continually for the next seven years with price hikes” as a plan. You lose money AND you piss people off. It may have been purely defensive for Disney and the other traditional media companies that launched live streaming options. “Just try to keep Google from getting leverage over us by selling YoutubeTV at a loss.”
 
AugustaSwarm

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cpf2001 said:
Used to work in this space. The forty dollar price points were money losers from day one. The long term strategy was never clear to me especially since Disney controlled Hulu by then and fully owned ESPN. So if Hulu TV had gotten big enough to have enough leverage to squeeze channels to try to keep prices down… it’s squeezing the ESPN channels they also own… for non-sports stuff maybe there’s some Hollywood accounting black magic involved but for sports ESPN has LARGE external contracts that are booked for long time periods.

“About the same price as cable” is going to be inevitable for anything that carries the same channels. The bulk of the cost comes from the popular ones so even a “sports only” package will never be that cheap.

I just don’t get “let’s lose money to get customers and then piss them off continually for the next seven years with price hikes” as a plan. You lose money AND you piss people off.
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They're banking on the masses being too busy (or lazy) to make a change.

It didn't pan out for Sony's streaming platform - I think it was called Vue or something like that. They were one of the first "big" platforms to go under - as more consolidation occurs, there will be more.
 
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