Okay, dear reader, we’ve reached the point in the nascent saga of Spulu—the forthcoming sports bundle confederation concocted by frenemies Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery—where the knives are truly out. After all, Spulu was a corporate marriage created for money, not love, and consummated by a troika of mediaco C.E.O.s (including a Murdoch heir and the embattled David Zaslav) with the thinly veiled intention of prolonging the cable bundle. Spulu’s list of haters is long and varied, starting with rival media executives, who were caught off guard; league executives, who were also left in the dark and have concerns about how the service could impact negotiations; and, of course, cable providers. 

But small cable operators hate Spulu the most. They fear the sports-focused streaming service will likely cannibalize their own customers as much as the cord-nevers. Exacerbating matters is the fact that they feel powerless to stop its formation—outside of a long-shot and utterly quixotic bid to have federal antitrust regulators put the kibosh on it. But, alas, desperate times call for desperate measures…