Judge Delivers Another Blow to David Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery

I spent a lot of time last week researching David Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery, and by that, I mean: I listened to several podcasts. And the thing is: We all know he’s been making terrible decisions on the creative side of things (killing Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, pulling a bunch of old originals off of Max). He’s also been profoundly bad on the business side of things.

Granted, no matter who the CEO is, the whole place was going to sink under the weight of cord-cutters. When most of your business is tied up in cable channels, and those cable channels are losing billions in value (WBD reported last week that they were literally $9 billion less than previously valued), it’s going to be a rough few years (see also Paramount).

But there have been just so many business mistakes that have worsened the situation: Buying more cable channels by merging with Discovery; the constant rebranding (HBO - HBO Max - Max); hiring Chris Licht to run CNN and firing him a year later after a spectacular failure the network is still trying to recover from; killing the CNN streaming service only a month or two in (imagine how many subs that would have now as the only major streaming news service); and, of course, botching the rights to the NBA, in effect rendering its only valuable cable network, TNT, worthless.

And then there is Venu. Venu is the sports package WBD planned along with Disney/ESPN and Fox Sports. The idea was to provide a streaming bundle for the sports fan, except it’s not exactly a one-stop shop for sports since NBC, CBS, and Prime Video still have NFL games, and Apple/Peacock have soccer, etc., and — again — WBD is losing NBA rights next year.

Still, it felt like a small lifeline for the struggling WBD — a share of that (exorbitantly priced) $42.99 would go a long way. There was just one catch: Another streaming service called Fubo also offered this sports-heavy package, but they were forced by the likes of Disney, WBD, and Fox to package it with all their useless cable networks, meaning that Fubo has to charge around $70 to offer the same thing that Venu is planning to offer.

If that sounds unfair to you, that’s because it is … or at least, that’s what a judge has ruled, temporarily blocking Venu ahead of the NFL season. The judge ruled that combining the offerings of all three in one package is anticompetitive.

“Disney, Fox, and [Warner Bros. Discovery] are each significant players in live sports licensing, who otherwise compete against each other both to secure sports telecast rights and to attract viewers to their live sports programming. But together, they are dominant,” the judge ruled.

Fubo’s stock price rose 16 percent, while WBD’s stood at “barely hanging on.” WBD’s other bright idea, meanwhile, is to launch a Harry Potter series, despite the fact that the author of those novels is toxic. Good luck, Zaslav.