Congress asks Justice Department to investigate Fox-Disney-WBD joint venture for sports broadcasting monopoly

Top congressional lawmakers have sent a letter to the Justice Department expressing their concerns about the upcoming sports joint venture between FOX, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney subsidiary ESPN, urging them to investigate it for antitrust violations.

This The proposed venture, called Venu Sports, would control more than 80% of national sports broadcasts and more than half of all national sports content, giving it a monopoly on televised sports, according to a letter signed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Rep. Joaquin Castro.

The letter stated, among other things, that the joint venture risks concentrating the market for live sports broadcasting, could result in price increases, raises antitrust concerns, could potentially harm the public interest, and is inconsistent with the purposes of the FCC’s national ownership cap.

“Under the pretext of providing consumers with choice, Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. proposed to cease competing for live sports programming and jointly develop a product that would allow them to leverage their joint dominance of sports programming to the advantage of their streaming network, limiting competition and depriving consumers of choices between terrestrial channels, cable and streaming providers,” the letter concluded.

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