The trial for Fubo’s lawsuit against Venu Sports and its partnering companies was recently set for October 2025, but that didn’t stop Fubo CEO David Gandler from expressing his firm belief that ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery engaged in anticompetitive negotiations on the pricing of not only Venu Sports carriage fees but also carriage deals between these sports broadcasters and other cable distributors.
Gandler joined the Streamtime Sports podcast for an interview released Wednesday in which he accused these networks of negotiating “in bad faith” to “synthetically inflate prices.”
As with Fubo’s lawsuit, Gandler aimed repeatedly at these companies’ supposedly dishonest use of most-favored-nation (MFN) clauses, which a Disney lawyer has argued are actually pro-competition. MFNs require media companies to maintain similar pricing across negotiations with various distributors, but Fubo’s lawsuit accuses Disney, Fox, and WBD of using them to mandate the carriage of (and payment for) less-watched networks like Disney XD, Fox Sports 2, or truTV.
“There seem to be, in my view subjectively, negotiations that are in some cases potentially negotiated in bad faith,” Gandler told Streamtime Sports host Nick Meachem. “Subjectively, we’ll have the experts chime in on this at the right time … we think those have been used in a very pernicious manner versus a true MFN.”
Gandler and Fubo believe these companies have used MFNs to keep prices high, while Venu Sports created a break in their previous business strategy of not allowing consumers to pay for sports networks a la carte or in so-called “skinny bundles.”
“Those MFNs have been used to synthetically inflate prices,” Gandler said. “I believe we have a very, very strong case.”
Speaking in detail publicly for the first time since testifying as part of Fubo’s lawsuit against Venu and its three parent companies, Gandler went into greater detail about how he believes they are colluding.
Gandler highlighted his belief that to make Venu as profitable as possible (its monthly price before a judge issued an injunction preventing its launch), the companies gave themselves a break when it came to carriage costs for the sports content that would populate the service.
“They are vertically integrated companies, they have decided to collude together to build a service and give themselves exclusivity for some period of time,” Gandler said. “My sense is that they also gave themselves preferential pricing. That’s my sense, it’s subjective, I can’t say for sure, but I can’t imagine they gave themselves the same price that they gave us for a service (Venu) that would start with zero subscribers.”
Disney recently struck a deal with DirecTV that would allow DirecTV customers to pay less for a sports-centered skinny bundle, and get “ESPN Flagship” for free when it launches in 2025.
Gandler pointed out that Fubo’s business strategy for a decade has been to establish this option for customers.
“They claim this is a very innovative product, but it’s only innovative because they’ve stifled the rest of us,” Gandler said. “We’ve been trying to do this since the beginning of streaming, and we’ve been told, no, you can’t do it.”
While Venu and its parents have fought relatively hard against Fubo’s lawsuit, Fox recently submitted a court filing that could allow it to get out of the agreement.
Gandler highlighted how the very existence of Venu proves that Fubo’s argument holds weight because it shows the companies banding together to form a competitor to Fubo.
“If we’re a weak competitor, why are you required to partner together and give yourself rights that you won’t provide anyone else at a price that you believe is the right price?” Gandler questioned.
While Gandler was careful to couch the more touchy accusations in his own opinion, these comments mark a clear doubling-down not only in the legal proceedings by Fubo but also show that the company believes it has finally broken through in its long fight against the big cable networks, which it believes have acted anti-competitively for a long time.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.