Watching your favorite team play is going to be an expensive nightmare...
On Jan. 6, Disney announced that it was combining its Hulu With Live TV service with the independent live-sports streamer FuboTV. In turn, Fubo asked the court system to drop its antitrust lawsuit against Venu Sports, the planned megaproject from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery that would have pooled all three broadcasters’ sporting licenses into one sports-focused streaming service. In turn, Disney will buy a 70 percent stake in Fubo, whose multichannel platform will gradually absorb the Disney-owned Hulu With Live TV service over the next year. Despite having lodged a potent case against Disney—one that persuaded a federal judge to block Venu Sports’ launch and eventually bring the suit to trial—Fubo is celebrating a sweetheart deal with its former courtroom enemy...
Those legal efforts may not be such a long shot. Disney is also facing a federal antitrust lawsuit from 5 million YouTube TV subscribers, who collectively claim that the media giant’s ownership of both ESPN and Hulu allow it to artificially overload package offerings and thus overcharge distributors during negotiations. (Notably, the combined subscriber counts in the “Fulu” merger add up to 6.2 million—not too far below YouTube TV’s 8 million total subscribers, who begrudgingly pay $82.99 a month for the Google-owned streamer...
Much more here because this is way too complex to summarize. It's like "Dallas" meets "Boardwalk Empire" meets "Succession".
https://slate.com/technology/2025/01/disney-fubo-hulu-merger-live-sports-monopoly.html
In the end of course, the little guys get screwed.