Sports streaming platform FuboTV has filed a lawsuit accusing Walt Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery of anticompetitive behavior in attempt to stop the media giants from launching a massive streaming service this fall.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New York federal court, follows an announcement on Feb. 6 that the companies were teaming up on a joint sports venture that will provide fans with content across all four major leagues as well as college sports on a single platform.
“For decades, Defendants have leveraged their iron grip on sports content to extract billions of dollars in supra-competitive profits from distributors and consumers,” Fubo TV Inc. claims in their court filing.
“Defendants earned many of these profits by ‘bundling’ their commercially critical sports content with other, less desirable content — forcing sports fans to purchase channels they did not want,” the complaint adds.
Fubo also accuses the companies of additional anticompetitive behavior, such as charging Fubo for content licensing rates at prices up to 50% higher than what they asked other distributors to pay.
The lawsuit is seeking billions in damages for what Fubo says are costs incurred from these actions and later passed onto customers.
The suit also lists Disney-owned ESPN and Hulu as defendants, as the joint venture aims to offer live channels including ESPN, Fox, ABC, TNT and TBS on a direct-to-consumer basis, but also as bundles with Max, Hulu and ESPN+.
When Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery announced their joint platform earlier this month, it resulted in Fubo’s stock falling more than 25%. The latter warned at the time that it believed the venture potentially violated antitrust laws.
“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,” said Fubo co-founder and CEO David Gandler in a statement Tuesday. “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.”
Gandler also referred to the companies as a “sports cartel” and accused them of “effectively stealing” Fubo’s strategy.
Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. ESPN declined to comment.
