fuboTV has now dropped a number of channels, including FX, National Geographic and Fox RSNs. This appears to be an effect of the 21st Century Fox acquisition by Disney. While fubo has yet to publicly confirm the reason why, it has confirmed the removal of the channels.
The Walt Disney Company completed its acquisition of 21st Century Fox mid-way through 2019. Among other things, the purchase resulted in a number of Fox-owned channels moving under Disney’s wing. This included the channels that have now been removed from fuboTV.
In spite of Disney now being an investor in fuboTV (due to the 21st Century Fox purchase), the live TV streaming service has never really provided much in the way of access to Disney-owned channels and networks. With fuboTV having always been positioned as the de facto sports-focused live TV streaming service, this has always been most noticeable through the omission of ESPN. Regardless of previous access, the far-reaching effects of the Fox purchase by Disney appears to have resulted in the other channels now owned by Disney being removed from fuboTV’s main channel lineup.
How these changes affect fuboTV subscribers
fuboTV has now confirmed the change through a post in its help center. According to the announcement, the channels that have now been removed from the fubo Standard plan consist of:
- FX
- FXM
- FXX
- National Geographic
- Nat Geo Wild
- BabyTV
- BabyTV Español
- Nat Geo Mundo
- Fox Life
In addition, a separate help center positing has also now confirmed that Fox Regional Sports Networks have also been removed as well. All of these channel removals officially took effect on January 1, 2020.
fuboTV does point out that it continues to provide access to some Fox channels. The Fox channels still available through fuboTV include:
- Fox locals
- Fox News
- FS1
- FS2
- Fox Deportes
- Fox Soccer Plus
- Big Ten Network
The reason these channels remain unaffected is they were never included in the original purchase by Disney. Prior to the completion of the acquisition, Fox spun-off a number of its entities to ensure news and sports-related content remained under the control of Fox Corporation. In spite of the current changes, there’s no reason to suggest any of these Fox Corp channels will be removed anytime soon.
While these changes specifically relate to fuboTV, that’s not to say other live TV streaming services won’t be affected in a similar way. They might be depending on their own carriage deals with Disney which will take affect whenever any existing deals with 20th Century Fox come to an end.
Source: fuboTV
