The sports streaming service Fubo has temporarily fended off a huge financial threat from Disney-Fox-Warner’s potential competitor Venu Sports and its collection of sports broadcasting licenses thanks to a recent court ruling. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York granted Fubo’s request for an injunction in its antitrust case against the joint sports streaming venture and its parent companies.

US District Judge Margaret Garnett wrote in an opinion issued earlier today such a concentrated collection of media power would eliminate consumers’ choices. The launch of Venu would also “hike prices on both consumers and other distributors” and create a “multi-year monopolistic runway” in the sports streaming sector for Disney, Fox and Warner.

“Even if the [joint venture] defendants swear that such price-hiking and competition excluding will not actually occur (though…there is good reason to believe that it will),” the opinion reads, “one purpose of antitrust injunctions is to prevent anticompetitive incentives from forming in the first place so that American consumers do not have to simply take their word for it and hope for the best.”

Garnett also wrote the injunction is needed because of “quintessential harms that money cannot adequately repair” if Fox-Disney-Warner’s Venu Sports moves forward.

Fox-Disney-Warner first announced its plans to launch a live sports streaming channel in February and later revealed the name and price for its Venu Sports streaming service. The joint sports streaming venture will cost viewers $42.99 a month with a seven-day free trial and promises 14 channels of live sporting events with access to ESPN+ and four of its spinoff channels, the Fox network and both of its Fox Sports channels and a handful of Warner Bros. owned cable networks such as TNT and TruTV, according to a press release.

Fubo filed its lawsuit a couple of weeks after Fox-Disney-Warner’s initial announcement. Fubo’s antitrust lawsuit accused the trio of media giants of staging “a years-long campaign” to weaken its sports streaming service. The suit also claimed the joint venture would concentrate too many entities in one service and would hinder competitiveness and jack up prices for viewers and distributors.

The injunction puts a temporary hold on Fox-Disney-Warner’s plans for Venu Sports. Its fate will ultimately be determined by the antitrust case in federal court.

Amid all the competing headlines of the 2024 election, there may be no more bread-and-butter issue—literally—than how much Americans are paying to put food on their tables. The GOP is gearing up to attack the Biden-Harris administration for escalating grocery store bills, while presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has now responded with her own plan to fight higher food prices. 

One of the hottest items in this political food fight is unquestionably the ongoing litigation from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) attempting to block the Kroger-Albertsons grocery store merger. A host of Democratic lawmakers recently joined the legal fight, arguing that any potential merger would raise prices, increase food deserts, and disproportionately hurt unionized labor. As part of her new food price plan, Harris included a call for aggressive antitrust crackdowns in the food and grocery industry, mentioning the Kroger-Albertsons merger by name in her speech this week.

None of the arguments against the merger make much sense on the merits, but the FTC—and the Democratic Party writ large—are stacking the legal deck to achieve a predetermined outcome that conveniently aligns with their policy priorities.

The saga started back in October 2022, when The Kroger Company and Albertsons Companies Inc. (the parent company for popular grocery chains like Safeway and Acme, among others) announced their plans for a $24.6 billion merger. The FTC promptly launched a 16-month investigation, culminating in a lawsuit in federal court to block the proposed merger.

Kroger is the fourth-largest grocery store chain in America—behind Walmart, Amazon, and Costco—and Albertsons is the fifth-largest. Once merged, the combined company would rise to third on the list. On the surface, this may seem to provide some support for the FTC's position, but American shoppers would be wise to read the fine print.  

In truth, if the deal were to proceed, a merged version of Kroger and Albertsons would still only make up 9 percent of overall grocery sales. To put this in further perspective, consider that Walmart—the nation's largest grocery provider—would continue to operate more stores (including its Sam's Club outlets) than a Kroger-Albertson combo and maintain grocery revenue that is more than twice that of the merged company. 

One could easily argue, in other words, that far from being a monopoly, a Kroger-Albertsons joint venture would be the best hedge against potential monopolies forming among the even-more-dominant firms above it on the grocery store food chain. But incredibly, the FTC pretends that two of those larger companies don't exist in the marketplace at all simply by working with their own definitions.

The FTC contends that only local brick-and-mortar supermarkets (what one might think of as a "traditional" grocery store) and hypermarkets (such as Walmart or Target, which sell groceries alongside other goods) count in the market for groceries. This narrow definition completely circumvents wholesale-club stores (such as Costco) and e-commerce companies that sell groceries (such as Amazon). 

Given that Amazon and Costco just happen to be the second- and third-largest grocery retailers in the United States, the agency is blatantly gerrymandering the definition of the marketplace. The agency's longstanding position is that the only relevant market is stores where consumers can buy all or nearly all of their weekly groceries, which begs the question: Has anyone at the FTC stepped foot inside a Costco recently? Many Americans use club stores like Costco and BJ's Wholesale Club as their primary grocery stores, with around 15 percent of Americans ages 18–34 reporting that they do most of their grocery shopping at Costco.  

Pretending that the internet doesn't exist makes even less sense. As the International Center for Law and Economics notes, 25 years ago a mere 10,000 households took part in online shopping, whereas today 12.5 percent of consumers (or over 16 million people) purchase their groceries "mostly or exclusively" online. Amazon is also preparing to make its own big push into brick-and-mortar grocery retailing as well, with CEO Andy Jassy saying last year that the company must "find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly."

Beyond the FTC's tortured marketplace definitions, its arguments for the alleged harms of a conjoined Kroger-Albertsons are equal parts unconvincing and outdated. In its complaint, the agency points to escalating grocery prices in recent years, and Harris echoed this by stating that she would enact a "ban on price gouging on food and groceries" by directing the FTC to impose "harsh penalties" on grocers. She also pledged to continue aggressive antitrust enforcement in the food sector, going so far as to highlight the Kroger-Albertsons merger as an example of the type of deal that could increase prices. However, as many commentators have pointed out, food price increases likely have more to do with inflation than any lack of competition in grocery markets.

In addition to the consumer price harms the FTC alleges, over half of the agency's legal complaint focuses on the alleged harm the proposed merger would cause to the unionized workers at Kroger and Albertsons. Both companies are heavily unionized—in contrast to Walmart and Amazon—and the agency claims that a combined company would have more leverage over unions given that the unions would no longer be able to play one company off against the other as a negotiating tactic. This glosses over the fact that the demand for labor is particularly competitive in the retail sector broadly, and workers could easily just jump ship to a different employer in the face of any exploitative terms pushed by the merged firm.

A final concern highlighted by some Democratic lawmakers is that a merged company could result in more store closures that lead to geographical areas within which there are few or no grocery options. Once again, this ignores the rise of club stores like Costco and online/home delivery grocery options. These alternatives reduce the plausible areas within which such food deserts can take hold, showing once again a poor understanding of the modern grocery marketplace.

Despite the many dubious underpinnings of the FTC's challenge, it fits with the Biden administration's aggressive antitrust emphasis over the past four years. While some observers were holding out hope that a Harris administration might curtail overzealous antitrust enforcement, her new food price agenda has poured cold water all over that (already wishful) thinking.

The post Harris Joins the FTC's Food Fight Against Kroger-Albertsons Merger appeared first on Reason.com.

Saber Interactive has reportedly found an exit strategy from the death grip of its parent company, Embracer Group AB. Bloomberg reported Thursday that “a group of private investors” will buy the studio in a deal worth roughly $500 million. Saber would then become a private company with about 3,500 employees.

Engadget emailed a spokesperson from Saber for confirmation about the alleged buyout. The studio declined to comment.

The alleged agreement would be one of Embracer’s most significant cost-cutting moves since the collapse of a reported $2 billion deal with a group backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Some criticized the imperiled deal as the gaming equivalent of “sportswashing,” using popular sporting acquisitions and partnerships to boost beleaguered governments’ global images. That followed US intelligence’s conclusion that the Saudi regime murdered The Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi in late 2018.

Other cost-cutting moves at Embracer have included laying off about 900 employees in September, cutting another 50 or so jobs at Chorus developer Fishlabs and implementing more layoffs at Tiny Tina’s Wonderland developer Lost Boys Interactive, Beamdog, Crystal Dynamics and Saber subsidiary New World Interactive. Embracer also closed Saints Row studio Volition Games and Campfire Cabal.

LucasArts / Aspyr

According to Bloomberg, Saber’s sale won’t affect the studio’s role in developing an upcoming Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) remake. That game has already changed hands once: One of Saber’s Eastern European studios took over from Aspyr Media in the summer of 2022.

Aspyr had reportedly already been working on the game for years before providing a demo for Lucasfilm and Sony in June 2022; a week later, Aspyr fired its design director and art director. (Reports of the KOTOR demo costing a disproportionate amount of time and money may indicate a possible reason for the fallout.) By late that summer, Saber had taken over the development of the highly anticipated — and indefinitely delayed — remake.

Embracer bought Saber for $525 million in 2020 as it scooped up gaming studios left and right. It acquired at least 27 companies during that period, folding some of them (Demiurge Studios and New World Interactive) into Saber. Bloomberg reports that the deal to sell Saber to private investors includes an option to “bring along multiple Embracer subsidiaries.”

One studio that’s far too big to be included in this transaction is Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment. However, Kotaku reported Thursday that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford told staff this week that a decision about the studio’s future had been made. He allegedly said he’d be able to share more details with them next month.

In the meantime, a cloud of uncertainty envelops Gearbox — and Embracer’s other remaining studios. “I’ve personally been looking for roles elsewhere not just due to the Embracer layoff fears, but due to pay,” an anonymous developer reportedly said to Kotaku. “Vague and in a holding pattern is definitely par for the course at the moment and has been for most of 2023.”