'No way prices will not continue to escalate': FuboTV CEO on future of sports streaming
Watching your favorite sport is about to get a lot more expensive, one streamer has warned.
"There's no way that prices will not continue to escalate," Fubo co-founder and CEO David Gandler told Yahoo Finance Live in an interview on Wednesday.
Gandler explained consumers must pay for a traditional TV subscription if they want access to the majority of sports content. At the same time, media companies are now removing certain offerings from the bundle in an effort to drive users to other services.
That's "forcing" consumers to pay for another service just "to get that one or two extra games," Gandler argued. "[Consumers] are basically double paying in more than 30% to 50% of cases for the same content."
The executive's comments come on the heels of a fiery antitrust lawsuit the streamer filed against Disney's ESPN (DIS), Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), and Fox (FOXA) on Tuesday. The three media giants are joining forces to launch a "joint venture" sports streaming service sometime this fall.
Fubo is seeking to block the joint venture, citing "the extreme suppression of competition in the US sports-focused streaming market."
"To me, this is almost borderline racketeering," Gandler said about the partnership.
Fubo boasts more than 200 channels and 1.5 million North American subscribers. Shares of the company have fallen more than 30% since the Disney-WBD-Fox JV was first announced on Feb. 6.
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 brings together the media giants' respective slates of sports networks. Collectively, the new service encompasses about 55% of US sports rights, according to Citi Research.
In the suit, Fubo said the combined service would culminate in "a total freeze-out" and only increase the participants' incentives not to make the necessary content available to Fubo and other sports distributors.
Additionally, the sports streamer said it's been charged above-market licensing rates. In a separate press release, the company said the media giants have charged Fubo rates that are "30% to 50%-plus" higher compared to other distributors.
"There are significant damages here because we have not been able to compete fairly," Gandler said, referring to the "iron grip" the companies have on commercially critical sports content.
"This is a real situation," the executive continued. "It's anticompetitive and all we ever wanted to do was to compete on equal terms, but that is has been proven to be impossible."
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department plans to investigate the JV to determine whether or not it would violate any antitrust laws.
Alexandra Canal is a Senior Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @allie_canal, LinkedIn, and email her at alexandra.canal@yahoofinance.com.
Click here for the latest stock market news and in-depth analysis, including events that move stocks
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
