It finally has a name. The upcoming “Super Sports Streaming Service,” as we’d taken to calling it, that combines the rights of Disney (which means ESPN), Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery shall be known as Venu Sports. (Try pronouncing it like “venue” and it’ll make sense.)
There’s still no word of when, precisely, it will launch, or what it will cost.
“We are excited to officially introduce Venu Sports, a brand that we feel captures the spirit of an all-new streaming home where sports fans outside of the traditional pay TV ecosystem can experience an incredible collection of live sports, all in one place,” Venu Sports CEO (and former Apple exec) Pete Distad said in a press release. “As preparations for the platform continue to accelerate, we are singularly focused on delivering a best-in-class product for our target audience, built from the ground up using the latest technologies to engage and entertain discerning sports fans wanting one-stop access to live games.”
The website for Venu Sports dubs it “the future home of sports streaming. Venu will bring the most sought-after live sports from the top leagues and teams, together in one place. All in a new app built from the ground up for sports fans.”
If you’ve missed all this over the past few months, the gist is that Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery are pooling their resources — that is, the broadcast/streaming rights to all the sporting events they currently control — and putting them in a single streaming service. It’s not necessarily meant to suck folks away from existing cable or streaming subscriptions, nor does anyone expect customers to carry both, because that would be duplicative. Instead, Venu Sports is aimed for some 60 million “cord-nevers” — those who don’t currently subscribe to anything at all.
Meanwhile, Fubo — the smallest of the live streaming services in the U.S. — has filed a federal lawsuit against Venu Sports, alleging that the players involved have resorted to unfair business practices to keep Fubo (and others) down while continuing to build up their own business interests. It’s doubtful that the lawsuit will lead to a delay in the launch of Venu Sports, however.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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