A lawsuit between a streaming service and three streaming service providers ended in a surprising way on January 6, 2025, with a merger between the plaintiff (Fubo) and one of the defendants (Disney). Only hours before the defendants were due for a court appeal, Fubo settled with Disney and two other defendants for a total of $220 million, and an additional loan of $145 million provided by Disney in 2026; in return, Fubo agreed to be combined with Disney’s Hulu+ Live TV business, run by Fubo’s leadership with Disney controlling roughly 70% of the service. Further a couple of days later the providers announced they would be ending the joint venture at the centre of the lawsuit.
Fubo sued Disney, Fox, and Warner Brothers earlier in 2024, alleging that a live sports streaming joint venture created by the three broadcasters was an attempt to drive rivals out of business, which would ultimately harm consumers. The January 6, 2025 decision was likely influenced by a preliminary injunction granted to Fubo in August 2024. This article summarizes the background and the economic reasoning used in that decision by Judge Margaret M. Garnett of the Southern District of New York. The case was FuboTV Inc. et al. v. The Walt Disney Company et al.
In this article, author Matthew Calvin outlines the key economic arguments in the case: 1) the relevant market definition and 2) whether an incumbent, that relied on distributors for content, would be harmed by those distributors launching a competitor. Relatively little of the decision focused on harm to consumers, instead focusing on whether the effect of the new competitor “may be to ‘substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly’ in ‘any line of commerce.’” The opinion presumed that this would be to the detriment of consumers but did not devote much space to investigating this possibility.
The article was originally published by the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Law Section’s Economics Committee newsletter in February 2025.
New York 
