Venu Sports, the upcoming sports streaming service put together by ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros Discovery will cost users $42.99 per month when it launches later this fall.
That price point could be a welcome respite for you sports fans, as keeping up with your favorite teams in the streaming era has become an expensive proposition, especially if you follow multiple sports and multiple leagues. Even watching live games of your hometown clubs can require a costly subscription to multiple services, such as Apple+, Hulu Live, Amazon Prime, Peacock, or ESPN Plus, all depending on which leagues you’re looking to follow. The NBA, for example, recently auctioned its broadcast rights and will be moving those games from TNT, where they had been a mainstay for decades, over to Amazon ahead of the 2024-25 season. This means you’ll need a Prime, Peacock or ESPN membership in order to watch what was previously part of your existing cable/Hulu subscription.
The Venu Sports app aims to consolidate all of these various streaming sources into a single, expansive service. Devised and developed by a partnership between ESPN (which is owned by Disney), FOX, and Warner Bros Discovery, the joint venture will license the sports catalogs of those three companies. Per the announcement, Venu will offer access to 14 live sports channels, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV, and ESPN+, as well as on-demand content from the three company’s libraries of sports shows like ESPN’s 30 for 30.
Venu’s live coverage promises to be exhaustive, offering more than 4,300 hours of live golf coverage each year and “complete coverage” of all four Grand Slam tournaments. You’ll also get “comprehensive coverage” of more than 700 regular-season MLB games, plus the playoffs and World Series; over 1,200 regular season (and all post-season playoff) NHL games, and more than 120 regular and post-season NFL games, including Super Bowl LIX.
In addition to live coverage of most major American sports leagues (the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, and WNBA), you’ll be able to watch Division 1 games, UFL and “International” soccer (not Premiere League though, that’s exclusive to Peacock), Grand Slam tennis, INDYCAR, NASCAR and F1 auto racing; PGA Championship golf and combat sports, including both the UFC and PFL. Not only will the live games be streamed but the pre- and post-game shows, such as SportsCenter, Fox’s NFL Sunday and College GameDay, will as well.
Venu will likely go up in price after its introduction, like all other streaming services, but at least the initial promise looks pretty good.
Source: PR Newswire
