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One streamer has warned that the cost of watching your favorite sport will become significantly more expensive.
“There’s no way the price won’t continue to rise,” Fubo co-founder and CEO David Gandler told Yahoo Finance Live in an interview Wednesday.
Gandler explained that if consumers want to access most sports content, they will need to pay a traditional TV subscription fee. At the same time, media companies are now removing certain services from their bundles in order to direct users to other services.
It “forces” consumers to pay for another service “to get an extra game or two,” Gandler argued. ”[Consumers] Essentially, you’re paying twice for the same content in over 30% to 50% of cases. ”
The executive’s comments come on the heels of a bitter antitrust lawsuit the streamer filed against Disney-owned ESPN (DIS), Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Fox (FOXA) on Tuesday. Three media giants are working together to launch a “joint venture” sports streaming service later this fall.
Fubo is seeking to block the joint venture, citing “extreme suppression of competition in the U.S. sports-based streaming market.”
“To me, this almost borders on extortion,” Gandler said of the partnership.
Fubo boasts over 200 channels and 1.5 million North American subscribers. Since the formation of the Disney-WBD-Fox joint venture was first announced on February 6, the company’s stock price has fallen more than 30%.
Disney’s ESPN and WBD declined to comment on the lawsuit. Fox did not immediately respond to Yahoo Finance’s request for comment.
The unnamed platform will integrate the media giant’s respective sports networks. The new service will cover about 55% of U.S. sports rights, according to Citi Research.
Fubo said in the lawsuit that the integrated service would ultimately result in a “total freeze” and would only increase incentives for participants to deny Fubo and other sports streaming companies access to the content they want. Stated.
Additionally, the sports streamer said it was being charged license fees that exceeded the market price. In a separate press release, the company said the media giant charges Fubo “30% to more than 50%” more than other distribution companies.
“We’re not being able to compete fairly, and there’s significant damage being done here,” Gandler said, referring to the companies’ “iron control” over commercially important sports content.
“This is the reality of the situation,” the executive continued. “It’s anti-competitive and all we ever wanted was to compete on a level playing field, but that has proven impossible.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department will investigate whether the joint venture violates antitrust laws.
alexandra canal I’m a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @allie_canal, LinkedIn, Email alexandra.canal@yahoofinance.com.
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