FILE - The Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, center, is located at Foley Square, Oct. 7, 2020, in New York. With the U.S. Open tennis tournament beginning Monday and college football kicking into high gear, this was supposed to be the week when some expected the Venu Sports streaming service to have a soft launch at least.The Aug. 16 ruling by United States District Judge Margaret M.
Garnett has scheduled a pretrial conference for Sept. 12. According to a memo Garnett sent to both parties on Monday, if the case goes to trial, the earliest it would begin is late February. Venu Sports would include offerings from 14 linear networks — ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS, truTV — as well as ESPN+.
“We agree with Venu’s shrouded market-sizing estimates that were unearthed during the trial that recognize an ‘ocean of opportunity’ to offer consumers skinnier packages. However, we disagree with Venu’s anti-competitive strategy and believe that TV distributors should have the same flexibility to thrive alongside services by offering genre-based packages that extend beyond sports to include locals, entertainment, news, family, movies, and others,” Thun wrote.
In last year’s agreement between Charter Communications and Walt Disney Company, Disney included the Disney+ Basic ad-supported offering, ESPN+ and ESPN’s future direct-to-consumer service to customers of certain Spectrum TV packages.