After Disney pulled the plug on sports-streaming service Venu last week, a Fubo subscriber filed a proposed class action suit in New York federal court on Tuesday, alleging that the media giant has violated antitrust laws as both a content supplier and a distributor.
The suit states that because Disney owns ESPN, it “has a chokehold over sports programming in the United Staters” and “extract monopoly rents” forcing streaming services to carry non-ESPN content that they don’t want.
“These anticompetitive tactics restrain competition from rivals to Disney’s Hulu in the SLPTV market and force independent streaming services such as Fubo to charge higher prices to their customers than they would in a free market,” the complaint reads.