Warner Bros. Discovery has followed Disney to law against Dish Network for its live streaming service Sling TV offering exclusive-time programming packages.
The two media giants are suing for breach of contract, with WarnerMedia the up-to-date to allege that Sling’s new Day, Week and Weekend Passes violate programming agreements. The declining linear TV ecosystem depends on a “longstanding industry-standard model” of monthly subscription services, it said.
Dish distributes WB networks including TNT, CNN, TBS, HGTV, Investigation Discovery and Food Network to Sling TV subscribers and, WBD says, is hawking the channels to sell the slimmer passes.
“Programmers depend on monthly subscriptions to finance, acquire, develop, produce and program hundreds of different programs for their 24/7 network programming,” the company said, and Dish is violating “the scope of rights granted to it” under affiliation agreements with Warner.
A pass is not a subscription, insists the company led by CEO David Zaslav in a suit in Federal Court in the Southern District of New York.
Warner said the passes threaten to disrupt its relationships with other distribution partners, who may immediately want to offer similar short-term passes. Many of them have, in fact, already contacted Warner to ask about the possibility of doing just that, the company said. The suit claims irreparable harm and asks the court for immediate injunctive relief shutting the passes down.
Disney sued Dish and Sling on August 26 for the mini-bundles.
“Allowing consumers to pick and choose individual programs or days of the week to subscribe to would make it impossible for programmers to properly plan and invest in their linear programming or monetize all the content they acquire and produce for their linear networks,” said Warner, citing its cost of programming, especially sports rights. The suit includes redacted affiliation contracts between Warner and Dish.
Dish itself is not shy about acknowledging it’s trying to flip the script on traditional streaming bundles.
“Sling TV has broken the mold of expensive, rigid bundles with flexible Sling Orange Day, Weekend and Week Pass subscriptions – pay-as-you-want instant access. This customer-first model challenges the old guard’s outdated pricing playbook, exposing their dependence on market power and resistance to change. With no long-term contracts and lower costs, Sling puts control back in the hands of subscribers, signaling a shift toward competition that puts consumer benefit ahead of monopolistic control,” said an EchoStar spokesperson in a statement provided to Deadline.
The Sling and Dish TV parent called the new passes “just another way we’re fighting to bring customers the programming they want with the flexibility they deserve.”
Dish announced and launched the new passes “without consulting or even notifying programmers” and did it right at the key start of fall sports season with “baseball playoffs around the corner.”
Warner has somewhat less at stake than Disney since it doesn’t have a broadcast network and its sports portfolio is slimmer than in the past after losing the NBA.
The networks in question will be split off from Warner’s studio and streaming business next year into a standalone public company led by WBD’s current CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels.
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