How the future of sports streaming died

Venu Sports seemed like such an obvious idea. Instead of spreading all your sports viewing across a million different platforms with a million different interfaces and subscriptions, what if you could watch everything in the same place? It makes perfect sense, until you get to the caveats. It’s not everything. It’s going to be expensive. Some will argue it’s anticompetitive. Maybe this isn’t a good idea after all.

On this episode of The Vergecast, after a brief update on the state of the TikTok ban, we explore the brief life and quiet death of the supposed future of sports streaming. Sportico’s Jacob Feldman joins the show to explain where Venu came from, why its parent companies — ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros.-Discovery — thought it was a good idea, and why Fubo immediately picked a fight over its existence. We also discuss the future of sports streaming now that Venu is gone, and whether ESPN, Amazon, or someone else stands to be the next worldwide leader.

After that, The Verge’s Kevin Nguyen joins the show for the first in our two-part New Year’s Resolution series. If you’re hoping to read more books this year, or just want to replace some of your aimless scrolling with more focused reading, Kevin has some tips on how to make it work on all your devices, at all times of day. Sometimes you get to curl up with a good book, but sometimes you have three minutes in line at the coffee shop. If you do it right, they’re both great reading times.

Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (866-VERGE11, or email vergecast@theverge.com) about why your phone won’t let you play multiple audio sources at a time. We have some ideas about how it works — and an easy way for Apple and Google to fix it.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started: