Company Updates - WBD
WBD announces sports streaming joint venture with ESPN and Fox; and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League gets off to a modestly good start.
Warner Bros. Discovery
Sports streaming joint venture
WBD has just announced that it is forming a joint venture with ESPN (Disney), and Fox to develop, launch and operate a new sports streaming service combining the linear networks of the three respective companies, and certain other DTC sports content and services.
Each of the three partners will own a one-third stake, with equal board representation, and they will licence their sports content to the joint venture on a non-exclusive basis. In future there is also the prospect of licencing third-party content not owned by the three partners.
The service will be offered through a new standalone app, but there will also be the ability for subscribers to bundle the app with Disney+, Hulu, and/or Max. The service is scheduled to launch in the autumn of 2024.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
On 2nd Feb, WBD released the long-awaited Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League - the latest title from Rocksteady studios, which developed the much applauded Arkham games.
It's got off to a modestly good start, with a peak concurrent player count of 13,459 achieved over the weekend on Steam. This is a far cry from the 38,129 achieved by Mortal Kombat 1, or the pretty staggering 879,308 achieved by Hogwarts Legacy, but it's not too bad considering the game had less than 30k followers before launch.
The fact that 85.33% of reviews have so far been positive should help give it some momentum, and I suspect it is one that will do well when it starts getting discounted from its current price of $69.99. It's also intended to be a service title - where new content is added over time - so we'll have to see how that pans out.
