The NFL, NBA, and other professional sports leagues were not told in advance of a new sports streaming service by Walt Disney Co., Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, even though they will be involved in it, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The sports leagues were reportedly not told of the service for months to prevent the news from leaking while details were still being settled.
“We’re aware of yesterday’s announcement and are still gathering details to understand this proposed new streaming service,” NFL spokesman Alex Riethmiller told the Journal.
The NBA is negotiating new rights deals with Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN, which Walt Disney Co. owns.
“While we look forward to learning more about this new venture, we’re encouraged by the opportunity to make premier sports content more accessible to fans who are not subscribers to the traditional cable or satellite bundle,” an NBA spokeswoman told the Journal.
Neither the NFL nor NBA immediately responded to Quartz’s request for comment.
Fox chief executive Lachlan Murdoch told Wall Street analysts on a quarterly reports call Wednesday there are no plans to add additional partners to the joint venture. He added that the target audience for the new streaming service are pay-TV households.
The new sports streaming platform, which will be under its own new brand and its own management team, is expected to launch in the fall, and will be available on an app. All three companies, which typically compete for an audience in the live sports arena, will offer their sports portfolios on the service.
Subscribers to the service will be able to bundle it with Disney+, Hulu, and Max, which are owned by partners in the joint venture, and have access to sports networks like ESPN. And so it beings: the Great Rebundling.