Disney Backed Out of ‘Redundant’ Venu Because of the Rise of Sports Skinny Bundles

The rise of sports skinny bundles led to The Walt Disney Company’s decision to back out of Venu Sports, the joint streamer between Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox. CEO Bob Iger revealed the reasoning during the company’s first quarter earnings call for 2025.

“What essentially happened is, after the decision was made and we started to implement the launch of Venu, the emergence of these skinnier bundles surfaced. Venu basically looked redundant to us,” Iger said on Wednesday morning. “This was a great opportunity for us to make ESPN available multiple skinny bundles, and then to actually merge the Hulu live and the Fubo channel businesses into one.”

The company previously announced that Fubo operations will be combined with the Disney-owned Hulu + Live TV offering. Once the combined offering is approved, Iger announced the company plans to use it to enhance the Hulu+ Live TV experience and to invest more into its interface.

“The goal all along is to make ESPN as accessible as possible and in as many ways as possible to the consumer,” Iger said. “I can’t predict whether the emergence of these skinnier bundles is going to have a material impact on cord cutting or not, except to say that we plan to take advantage of the emergence of these bundles, because it is a great way to distribute ESPN.”

More to come …

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