Disney/Warner/Fox sports venture draws lawmaker concerns on competition

A planned sports streaming bundle coming in the fall from Disney (NYSE:DIS), Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD) and Fox (NASDAQ:FOX) (NASDAQ:FOXA) has drawn pointed questions from a pair of lawmakers.

The three media giants agreed in February to build a streaming platform non-exclusively sharing their sports assets, giving some consumers a one-stop shop if their main interest was in streaming live sports.

The new yet-to-be-named venture tapped Apple ex Pete Distad as its new CEO a month ago.

On Tuesday, Reps. Jerrold Nadler (ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee) and Joaquin Castro wrote the venture’s parent companies’ three CEOs, Variety noted, amping up scrutiny of the competitive effects of bundling their services.

The lawmakers posed 19 market-related questions for Disney’s (DIS) Bob Iger, Warner’s (WBD) David Zaslav and Fox’s (FOX) (FOXA) Lachlan Murdoch, and requested answers by the end of the month.

“As programmers, your companies exert tremendous influence over pricing across the live sports TV ecosystem,” the legislators said in the letter, noting the project “raises questions about how this new offering would affect access, competition, and choice in the sports streaming market.”

Urging on the Justice Dept. in an investigation of the planned streaming bundle is fuboTV (FUBO), whose main business is sports-focused Internet television. Fubo has received backing for its challenge from satellite providers DirecTV (T) and Dish Network (SATS).