Fox’s Sports Streaming Venture with ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery Makes Progress, Promises Innovation

Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox, announced that the company’s sports streaming venture with Disney/ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery is making progress with over 150 engineers on board. The team is dedicated to creating a unique and innovative product for sports fans outside the traditional cable bundle. The venture recently launched internal beta tests and is set to launch this fall.

In March, Pete Distad, a former Apple and Hulu executive, was appointed to lead the new joint venture. Murdoch praised him as a world-class CEO who is off to a great start. He emphasized on a conference call that Fox remains fully supportive of the traditional cable bundle, which is their largest revenue stream. The company will support their distributors in any way they can, but also seek to place their brands where viewers are.

When asked if the new app will be bundled with Fox Corp.’s Tubi platform, Murdoch explained that Tubi is a different product. He suggested that it may make more sense to bundle sports with other subscription video-on-demand services in the future. Regarding the new app, Murdoch teased that it is innovative and specifically tailored for cord-nevers and cord-cutters. It will not be comparable to a tier of live channels, but rather a digital-first product.

Murdoch shared that the team is working at full capacity to complete the product. The user interface is a focus, but there is also a significant amount of engineering work involved in content ingestion from various partners to create a seamless product