Skinny ‘Fubo Sports’ Bundle in Coming Weeks After Fubo Drops 114,000 Subscribers in Q2

Fubo is trying to force its way back into relevance with a skinny bundle of channels it’s calling “Fubo Sports.” In today’s Q2 earnings call, CEO David Gandler announced the bundle will be availalbe in the coming weeks.

Like every live TV service, Fubo is trying to lock in customers before the all-important football season. Right now, Fubo is the most expensive way to watch the majority of the NFL this year. (See our NFL price comparison here.)

Fubo lost 114,000 subscribers in Q2, leaving it with its fewest domestic subscribers in more than two years: 1.36 million.

The second quarter is always Fubo’s weakest as sports fans walk away, but the current number is 6.5% lower than it was a year ago.

Gandler admitted why he’s losing the race for the shrinking live TV audience. “It’s become very clear that consumers are very focused on spending less rather than more,” Gandler said, displaying a firm grasp of human behavior.

“As we’ve always said, the goal is to deliver value to consumers along the demand curve at at different price points,” Gandler said.

This is laughable. Fubo historically offers one or two giant bundles, and they almost always include a hidden Regional Sports Fee that drives Fubo to ridiculous prices. The service dabbled with a tier that didn’t include regional sports, but then hid that option so it was only available to people downgrading their service.

I’ve used Fubo in the past and it’s a fine service, but that price is nasty and the service is lacking many important channels, including Univision, TNT, HGTV, TBS, CNN, History, and Discovery.

The Shadow of Disney

Gandler has made his name picking fights with other companies. His refusal to pay carriage fees to Warner Bros. Discovery and TelevisaUnivision led to their departure from Fubo. The price of the service never went down to compensate.

Most famously, Gandler sued Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery over their planned sports-only service: Venu Sports. A judge issued a preliminary injuction against the Venu team and they killed the project.

In retaliation, Disney just decided to buy Fubo and let it merge with Hulu + Live TV. With the news Disney is killing the standalone Hulu app, we don’t know if there will be a Hulu-aligned live TV platform alongside Fubo or if everything will get new names or simply exist as different tiers of the same service.

Gandler said the merger is expected to wrap at the end of 2025 or the first quarter of 2026. Once that happens, the live TV landscape could be in for some rough sledding.

In its shareholder letter, Fubo said, “We continue to believe that this business combination will increase competition and consumer choice.”

But there aren’t that many live TV services, and consolidating two of them decreases competition. Either way, stay with Streaming Smarter and we’ll cover what comes next.