Broadcasters detail streaming plans amid push to leverage sports rights online

Lachlan Murdoch’s US-based Fox Corporation is eyeing a pre-football season launch for Fox One, a streaming service it’s going it alone with after a proposed joint-venture sports streamer fell through in January.

Fox’s service will stick to its own entertainment, news and sports programming, unlike the proposed Venu that would have bundled sports content from Fox and competitors Warner Bros Discovery and the Disney-operated ESPN.

ESPN will also go its own way with a namesake platform that will include streams of its broadcast channels.

That will be alongside the content on its existing ESPN Plus service, set to become an entry-level tier for the new app.

In Australia and other markets, ESPN live streams are included as part of Disney Plus rather than being sold separately.

ESPN today announced US consumers will fork out US$30 a month for the platform, while pricing is yet to be announced for Fox One.

Exclusive streaming rights deals and local broadcast ‘blackouts’ designed to get more fans in stands have driven up the cost to watch sport in the US.

USA Today’s For The Win website has crunched the numbers on how much it would cost an NFL fan to watch every game in the next season and arrived at a total of more than US$800.

That’s more than $1,200, and—again—for complete access to just one sport.

In Australia, NRL boss Peter V’Landys—and de-facto diplomat to the distant lands of Papua New Guinea and Perth—says the league will start taking offers for coverage rights for its 2028 season onwards.

This will be the first round of negotiations in which rights-holder Nine Entertainment operates its own paid platform, Stan Sport, in addition to its FTA channels and BVOD service 9Now; Nine has historically partnered with Foxtel on deals and left any paywalled offerings to them.

Foxtel itself is under new ownership—the Saudi Arabia-backed sports streaming platform DAZN—with a global reach and cash to splash.

That means the toughest NRL contest this year could be played off the field.