Raphael Stevens

Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery disbanded their efforts to launch Venu, a joint sports streaming service.
The media giants have been detailing to investors how they plan to pivot or fill the void of Venu.
For Disney’s ESPN and WBD’s Max it’s a renewed focus on what’s already in the works for their streaming efforts. For Fox, it’ll be launch of a new streamer.

An advertisement for Venu Sports, the sports streaming venture by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox, hangs at the Fanatics Fest event in New York City on Aug. 16, 2024.
Jessica Golden | CNBC

With Venu done before it even got out of the starting blocks, Fox Corp., Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have been mapping out how to go it alone in live sports streaming.
Last month the media giants called off the launch of Venu — a planned direct-to-consumer streaming offering of the entirety of the three companies’ live sports — in the face of headwinds, including cost sensitivity and legal challenges.

The joint venture originally planned to launch the platform ahead of the 2024 NFL season.
However, when its debut got blocked by a U.S. judge, the companies went back to the drawing board, and despite appealing the decision, ultimately decided to move forward alone.
Investors have been keen to hear about each company’s next steps as competition ramps up for streaming subscribers and the traditional TV bundle bleeds customers. While Disney’s ESPN already had a strong foothold in streaming live sports, Venu was a bigger piece of the future for Fox and WBD.
In recent weeks, each company has been detailing their plans. Disney’s ESPN and WBD’s Max appear to be putting more weight behind their already announced or existing platforms. Meanwhile, Fox is taking the plunge into direct-to-consumer streaming.
Disney will shift its focus to the direct-to-consumer ESPN streaming platform, a yet-to-be-named flagship app separate from its ESPN+, that was already in the works before Venu collapsed. ESPN’s flagship app is expected to launch in the fall, and CNBC recently reported that it will add some user generated content in an attempt to attract younger viewers.

This week, WBD executives doubled down on their existing strategy behind streaming service, Max.
On Wednesday the company announced it would include sports and news at no additional cost on the standard and premium tiers of Max. Initially, WBD planned to charge extra for sports. It’s unclear if the reversal was directly related to the end of Venu. Including live sports in the standard Max cost had been part of WBD’s larger strategy discussions for some time, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Unbundling

WBD CEO David Zaslav said during Thursday’s earnings call with investors that one of the key drivers behind Venu was the motivation to put a big library of sports together in one place. He seemed to lament the loss of a singular, sports-centric app, reiterating his belief that bundling content is the best value proposition for consumers and eliminates confusion in finding your favorite leagues or teams.
“It’s not a good consumer experience and the value creation over the last 50 years almost always follows a better consumer experience,” said Zaslav on Thursday, noting WBD’s separate streaming bundle with Disney.
Finding the best value in the bundle has long been Fox’s proposition when staying out of the streaming wars.
Fox took the biggest swing since the dissolution of Venu with plans for its own streaming platform following years of sitting on the sidelines. The company plans to launch an app that offers both news and sports by the end of this year.
The company announced Thursday that it hired Pete Distad, who was previously in charge of Venu, to run its direct-to-consumer streaming service.
Earlier this week at an investor conference, Fox CFO Steve Tomsic said the impending launch of a streaming service shouldn’t be seen as a shift in strategy, noting that Fox isn’t “trying to chase the [streaming] dream that Netflix and Disney and Peacock and Paramount+ are all chasing. That is not our game.”
Fox divested its entertainment assets — a key component to major streaming platforms — in the sale to Disney in 2019, removing Fox from that game, Tomsic said. He added that streaming “does nothing for the consumer” of news and sports, due to how much is sliced and diced on varying platforms.
But rampant cord cutting pushed Fox to step into the streaming game.
“The reality is, as we sit here today, there’s the better part of 50 million households in the U.S. that are now outside the bundle,” Tomsic said this week, adding Fox’s streamer won’t compete with the general entertainment players.

Cost of sports

Live sports have played a pivotal role for media companies as the content that attracts the biggest audiences. This has been true for both traditional TV viewership, as well as streaming platforms looking to grow their subscribers.
In response, the cost of sports rights has ballooned, and media companies have recently become more methodical in what they choose to spend on.
Last week, ESPN stepped away from its long-term relationship with MLB, in part because the price-per-game was getting hard to justify.
And last year, WBD’s Turner Sports lost its rights to air NBA games starting with the 2025-2026 season, but it did pick up some new rights, including to certain college football games and the French Open.
WBD’s Zaslav on Thursday’s earnings call with investors also noted that the company wouldn’t necessarily jump to pay for more sports rights.
“There are sports rights that we can look at opportunistically and say we can make a real return on,” Zaslav said on Thursday’s call. “But you know, we don’t need any more sports anywhere in the world in order to support our business. We buy sports if we think it would enhance our business. And it’s going to get more difficult…[because of] some of those prices being paid.”
During an investor conference in December, Fox’s Tomsic echoed a similar sentiment around sports rights.
Tomsic said while sports are “foundational” to Fox, which notably has the NFL, college football and soccer, the company has “traded in and out” of it in recent years. He highlighted, as examples, that Fox has dropped the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, U.S. Golf and most recently WWE.
When Fox thinks about what makes sense for its sports portfolio, Tomsic said the company looks at the size of the audience and the potential advertising revenue.
“We take a pretty financially hard-nosed view about them, and so we’ll trade in and out of those sports as we see fit,” Tomsic said in December.
Disclosure: Peacock is the streaming service of NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC. More

Pending sales dropped 4.6% from December to the lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking this metric in 2001.
While weather may have been a factor, sales rose month to month in the Northeast.
Home prices have been easing over the last few months in certain areas, with more sellers cutting prices, but nationally they are still higher than they were a year ago.

“For Sale” and “Sale Pending” signs in the West Seattle neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, US, on Tuesday, June 18, 2024. The National Association of Realtors is scheduled to release existing homes sales figures on June 21. 
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

High mortgage rates and elevated home prices combined to crush home sales in January.
Pending sales, which are based on signed contracts for existing homes, dropped 4.6% from December to the lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking this metric in 2001. Sales were down 5.2% from January 2024. These sales are an indicator of future closings.

“It is unclear if the coldest January in 25 years contributed to fewer buyers in the market, and if so, expect greater sales activity in upcoming months,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “However, it’s evident that elevated home prices and higher mortgage rates strained affordability.”
While weather may have been a factor, sales rose month to month in the Northeast and fell in the West, which would have seen the smallest impact of cold temperatures. Sales fell hardest in the South, which has been the most active region for home sales in recent years.
Mortgage rates were also higher in January. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed loan spent the first half of December below 7% but then began rising. It was solidly above 7% for all of January, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Home prices have been easing over the last few months in certain areas, with more sellers cutting prices, but nationally they are still higher than they were a year ago.
This drop in sales also came despite the fact that the inventory of homes for sales in January, including houses that were under contract but not yet sold, increased by 17% compared with last year, growing on an annual basis for the 14th month in a row, according to Realtor.com.
“More for-sale inventory has the potential to generate more contract signings, but climbing home supply is not evenly distributed across the U.S.,” noted Hannah Jones, an economist with Realtor.com. “Moreover, many areas with high demand see relatively low for-sale inventory, which limits progress towards more home sales.”

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More

President Donald Trump’s proposed $5 million “gold card” for U.S. residency would be one the most expensive in the world, according to experts.
It also includes a tax loophole that would give the new-card holders a lucrative benefit not available to American citizens
Trump said gold-card holders would not be subject to taxes on their overseas income.

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high net worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
President Donald Trump’s proposed $5 million “gold card” for U.S. residency would be one the most expensive in the world, according to experts.

Yet it also includes a tax loophole that would give the new-card holders a lucrative benefit not available to American citizens, experts say.
Trump this week announced the creation of a new investment visa that gives the overseas wealthy permanent residency and a path to citizenship in return for $5 million. Attorneys who advise the wealthy on migration and investment visas say demand is already strong.
“The introduction of the gold card visa program represents a unique opportunity for high-net-worth individuals looking to secure U.S. residence with a pathway to citizenship,” said Dominic Volek, head of private clients at Henley & Partners. “The U.S. remains the undisputed leader in private wealth creation and accumulation.”
Volek and others who cater to the global rich say they’ve already fielded calls from clients wanting to purchase a Trump gold card. Approximately 135,000 of the world’s millionaires are projected to migrate to a new country in 2025, according to Henley. The United Arab Emirates and the U.S. typically top the list of destinations.
“I think it’s going to sell like crazy,” Trump said at his first Cabinet news conference Wednesday. “It’s a bargain.”

While the details remain unclear, the proposal would radically change the U.S. residency path for the global rich, who currently have to navigate a patchwork of programs with tight restrictions to stay in the country. It would also mark a major potential tax change for the global rich living in the U.S., carving out a new loophole for gold-card holders.
Currently, U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and green-card holders are required to pay income tax on their U.S. earnings as well as any income they earn overseas, including in their home country. The U.S. tax on worldwide income has traditionally made U.S. residency or citizenship far less attractive for the global rich, who have businesses spread across the world and often sheltered in tax havens.
Trump said gold-card holders would not be subject to taxes on their overseas income. The provision means that gold-card residents will be able to purchase a tax benefit not available to U.S. citizens. Advisors say they’re waiting on clearer directives, since the program could create dual classes of taxpayers among the American wealthy.
Yet the international income carve-out makes it far more attractive to the world’s ultra-wealthy.
“This would be a big departure” in tax treatment, said Laura Foote Reiff, an attorney at Greenberg Traurig who specializes in business immigration. “There are many wealthy individuals who are invested in U.S. companies or have families here that do not become permanent residents because they don’t want the tax consequences.”

Get Inside Wealth directly to your inbox

The tax loophole is one reason the government can charge a premium for the gold card. At $5 million, the program would be among the most expensive in the world. Volek said Singapore’s Global Investor Program requires an investment of 10 million Singapore dollars, or about $7.5 million. New Zealand’s most expensive program requires an investment of up to 10 million New Zealand dollars, or about $5.7 million. 
Most investment visa programs around the world cost less than $1 million, attorneys say.
About 100 countries offer some type of investment visa program, with about 60 jurisdictions actively promoting their programs, according to Henley. Roughly 30 programs dominate the $20 billion a year investment migration business, with Malta, the UAE, Portugal, Italy and several jurisdictions in the Caribbean being the most popular.
At Wednesday’s news conference, Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the U.S. gold card would replace the current investment visa program, called EB-5, which offers green cards to those who invest at least $900,000 or $1.8 million, depending on the area and project. The EB-5 program been plagued by delays and a history of fraud and abuse. The program was renewed by Congress in 2022 with major changes that required the investments to be channeled to more rural, poor areas and to infrastructure projects.
When it comes to applicants, China has been far and away the largest source of those seeking EB-5 visas, with Taiwan, Vietnam and India also ranking high. The U.S. issued just more than 12,000 EB-5 visas last year, with two-thirds going to Chinese nationals, according to the State Department. 
The wealthy Chinese are also the dominant users of investment visa programs around the world, including in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
While Trump said the U.S. could sell a million gold cards, attorneys say the likely demand is a fraction of that total – perhaps thousands but not hundreds of thousands. There are about 424,000 people in the world worth $30 million or more, with 148,000 of them in the U.S., leaving about 277,000 overseas ultra-wealthy who could reasonably afford the program.
Yet only a small fraction of them would likely apply to live in the U.S., immigration attorneys say. Last year, the U.S. had a net inflow of about 3,800 millionaires according to Henley.
“Hundreds of thousands sounds high,” Foote Reiff said. “There may be businesses that would pay to bring in top talent, like research scientists that they want to bring here and not be subject to quotas.”
One big draw of the new program is tax benefits. Historically, permanent residents in the U.S. have to pay income tax on their U.S. earnings as well as any income they earn overseas, including in their home country. The U.S. tax on worldwide income makes it far less attractive for the global rich who have businesses spread across the world and often sheltered in tax havens.
Trump said he expects the biggest demand will be from companies (especially in tech, like Apple) seeking to hire top college graduates in the U.S. who come from India, China or other countries but can’t get proper visas.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More

Paramount Global is ending several diversity, equity and inclusion policies related to data collection and staffing.
The company cited President Donald Trump’s executive order banning DEI in the government and directing agencies to probe private companies over their programs.
Fellow media giant Comcast is under investigation by the federal government for its DEI policies.

The Paramount Global headquarters in New York on Aug. 27, 2024.
Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Paramount Global told its employees this week that it’s ending numerous diversity, equity and inclusion policies, according to a memo obtained by CNBC.
In the memo sent to employees Wednesday, Paramount said it would comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning the practice in the federal government and demanding that agencies investigate private companies over their DEI programs.

Co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins cited the executive order in the memo, as well as the Supreme Court and federal mandates, as the impetus for the media giant’s policy changes.
Among the changes, the company said it “will no longer set or use aspirational numerical goals related to the race, ethnicity, sex or gender of hires.” Paramount also said it ended its policy of collecting such stats for its U.S. job applicants on forms and career pages, except in the markets where it’s legally required to do so.
“To be the best storytellers and to continue to drive success, we must have a highly talented, dedicated and creative workforce that reflects the perspectives and experiences of our many different audiences. Values like inclusivity and collaboration are a part of the Paramount culture and will continue to be,” the co-CEOs wrote in the memo.
They added that they will continue to evaluate their policies and seek talent from all backgrounds.
Paramount has taken part in a number of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. It donated millions to racial justice causes in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd and has touted initiatives such as a supplier diversity program and Content for Change, a campaign to overhaul storytelling about racial equity and mental health. The company has hosted an annual Inclusion Week for years and maintains an Office of Global Inclusion.

“Diversity, equity and inclusion is fundamental to our business,” former CEO Bob Bakish said at Paramount’s 2023 Inclusion Week, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Paramount joins companies like Walmart, Target and Amazon in rolling back their DEI goals and policies in recent months. Others, like Apple and Costco, have publicly defended and committed to their DEI stances, even as the Trump administration has escalated its attacks on the practices.
Media companies have taken a variety of steps to respond to the Trump administration’s policy changes since the president’s inauguration last month.
Earlier this month, Disney changed its DEI programs, which included updating performance factors and rebranding initiatives and employee resource groups, among other things.
Around the same time, public broadcaster PBS — which, as a recipient of federal funding, is more directly affected by Trump’s order than corporations are — said it would shut down its DEI office. CNBC reported that DEI employees would exit the company in order for it to stay in compliance with Trump’s executive order.
Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission began investigating Comcast over its DEI efforts. Trump’s executive order, signed on his first day in office, directs federal agencies to identify and probe “most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners” in their sectors. Comcast previously said in a statement it would cooperate with the investigation.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC. More

Warner Bros. Discovery said Thursday it added 6.4 million global streaming subscribers in the fourth quarter for a total of 116.9 million subscribers.
Fourth-quarter revenue for the streaming segment, which is anchored by flagship service Max, totaled $2.65 billion, up 5% from $2.53 billion in the same quarter last year.
In a shareholder letter, the company forecast adjusted EBITDA of $1.3 billion for its streaming business for the year and said it has a “clear path” to hit 150 million global subscribers by the end of 2026.

A sign outside of the Warner Brothers Discovery Techwood Turner Broadcasting campus is seen on June 26, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

Warner Bros. Discovery said Thursday it added 6.4 million global streaming subscribers in the fourth quarter for a total of 116.9 million subscribers.
Fourth-quarter revenue for the streaming segment, which is anchored by flagship service Max, totaled $2.65 billion, up 5% from $2.53 billion in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the unit came in at $409 million, compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $55 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

In a shareholder letter, the company forecast adjusted EBITDA of $1.3 billion for its streaming business for the year — roughly double the $677 million adjusted EBITDA it reported for 2024 — and said it has a “clear path” to hit 150 million global subscribers by the end of 2026. Max is set to launch on television service Sky in the United Kingdom and Ireland by the second quarter of 2026, and will debut in Germany and Italy in the first quarter of that year.
“In this generational media disruption, only the global streamers will survive and prosper, and Max is just that,” CEO David Zaslav said on the company’s earnings call on Thursday.
The media and entertainment company announced Wednesday that Max would keep its B/R Sports and CNN content available at no additional cost to subscribers in its standard and premium tiers. Initially WBD planned to charge an additional cost for sports.
However, it will pull both verticals from its basic, ad-supported tier beginning March 30.
Here’s how Warner Bros. Discovery performed in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Loss per share: 20 cents vs. earnings per share of 1 cent expected
Revenue: $10.03 billion vs. $10.19 billion expected

WBD’s overall fourth-quarter revenue fell 2% to $10.03 billion from $10.28 billion during the same quarter in 2023. Full-year 2024 revenue came in at $39.32 billion, down 5% from $41.32 billion in 2023.
Warner Bros. Discovery reported a net loss of $494 million for the fourth quarter of 2024, or a loss of 20 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $400 million, or a loss of 16 cents per share, during the fourth quarter of 2023.
TV networks revenue came in at $4.77 billion, compared to $5.04 billion in the year-earlier period. The company previously wrote down $9.1 billion for its networks business in its 2024 second-quarter earnings report. In its shareholder letter, Warner Bros. Discovery noted that it expects further declines in cable subscribers and that the advertising market for U.S. linear television is shrinking faster than expected.
For the studios business, fourth-quarter revenue totaled $3.66 billion, an increase of 15% from $3.17 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023.
“We are laser-focused on getting our studios back to a place of industry leadership,” Zaslav said.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates. More