You won’t be watching a major Disney and Warner Bros. sporting event anytime soon.

Last month, we reported on the rather sudden and rather large setback for some companies that can usually act like they own big chunks of the media landscape, because, uh, they do: Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox, whose plans to launch a giant sports streaming service were shut down by a New York judge after streaming competitor Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit against them. That scuttled plans to launch Venu Sports last month, which would have essentially taken all of the networks owned by those three sports-focused companies — ESPN, Fox, ABC, TNT, and TBS — and offered them as a single streaming package for $42.99 per month.

Now, that same judge has set a trial date for the antitrust case, and yes, you probably won’t be watching it anytime soon. Thanks to the massive amount of research and discovery that goes into antitrust lawsuits, the trial won’t start until October 2025. Disney, WBD, and Fox could They could hypothetically appeal the injunction, which would allow them to get going, but the shifting sands of sports licensing agreements have already begun to seriously mess with that. (Disney had already announced plans to offer an ESPN-exclusive streaming package before the trial began, while Warner Bros. lost its NBA rights starting in 2025, so whatever arcane contractual framework held the three giant companies together is already looking creaky.)

All this, of course, is happening within the framework Other the titanic battle Disney is currently waging over who airs what to whom, as its channels remain unavailable on satellite provider DirecTV. (This includes a memorable segment earlier this week when Disney, in the spirit of public goodness, offered DirecTV customers the chance to watch the presidential debate on ABC despite the ongoing fight, which the satellite company refused to allow.) And All this brings up the issue of network bundling, which will become one of the major issues as streaming slowly, inexorably turns back into cable TV. What is bundling, you ask? Oh, dear reader: Join us, shall we? in the sidebar Okay, what exactly is bundling?

Welcome to the Okay, What Exactly Is Bundling?! Basically, a company like Disney knows that not all of its channels have the same demand, and certainly not from the same people — so when they make deals with providers like DirecTV, they include a bunch of rules that say anyone who buys access to, say, ESPN also has to pay for access to a bunch of other channels that NO you want or care about. Anyone who is not one of the big companies hates that (because it inflates prices for junk you don’t want), so DirecTV has recently tried to create genre-specific network bundles to give consumers more flexibility and lower prices. But that clashes with those bundle requirements, hence the arguments and blackouts. At the same time, part of the crux of Fubo’s argument against Disney and its partners in Venu is that even as the three companies essentially morph into their own internet cable companies by creating streaming plans for their own networks, they’re also exempting themselves from having to bundle with each other by offering sports content directly to consumers Just channels they want. That’s a big part of why Venu was launched at this (relatively) low price point; no extra unwanted networks to be shoved in, just the sports that sports brains crave.

This is all, I admit, a bit technical and very messy, but there are literally billions of dollars at stake in these fights and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Fascinatingly, the Fubu/Venu lawsuit is likely to shed light on even more of this. The disclosure process in the lawsuit is expected to largely revolve around how Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox set up their shipping deals; the upshot of which is that we’re likely to see some of the Very an expensive sausage is created.