RIP Venu But Lachlan Murdoch Says Fox Will Finally Launch Its Own DTC Service This Year

Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch delivered a brief elegy this morning for shuttered sports streaming joint venture Venu, saying the team did a tremendous about of “really genius” work preparing the service for launch but that ultimately “legal distractions around the business “became increasingly difficult to bear.”

But, on a post-earnings call, he said the parent of Tubi and Fox Nation, is moving forward with a new, general DTC offering designed to reach “the large population of cord- cutters and cord-nevers who are not in the traditional cable bundle.”

He promised more details later but asked if it would include news – Fox News is going gangbusters — as well as sports, he said yes, that it will in fact be “holistic” of the company’s current offerings.

It’s a big deal for Fox, which has been adamant that it won’t rock the cable bundle, an infrastructure that it depends on. He indicated that it doesn’t have to clear additional rights. ‘It was just short on details.’It was just short on details.

On Venu, Fox had partnered with Disney/ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery to launch the all-sports streamer last fall but was sidetracked by a lawsuit lobbed by Fubo. The smaller streamer settled with the three and basically agreed to sell itself to Disney, clearing the way for Venu but the three walked away as other rivals threatened more legal headaches.

“Our only disappointment in sports is that we will not be moving forward with Venu.”

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