Venu has become one of those products, like New Coke or Quibi, that has been tortured and haunted almost from birth. Back in February, the arrival of this three-headed, strange bedfellow sports streamer mini-colossus seemed almost perfectly designed to frustrate the industry, confuse consumers, and stupefy the broader media. 

On the one hand, Fox and Disney and WBD deserved credit for trying to disrupt themselves, similar to the effort taken years earlier by Disney, Fox, and Comcast to stand up Hulu—a history which explains Venu’s ever-so-catchy Spulu nickname. And yet here were these large legacy mediacos, all of which had very different market caps and strategic interests. Disney seemed likely to use Venu as an R&D lab for its ESPN flagship streaming service planned for next fall. Fox, once the smallest of the three companies, presumably saw it as another way to monetize its NFL rights. Warner Bros. Discovery was along for the ride.