Here comes more money to help you watch TV on the internet. And some of the money is coming from the TV guys.
FuboTV, an online TV service, has raised $75 million from TV programmers and other investors
Fubo charges $45 a month for 70-plus channels and says it has more than 100,000 subscribers.
FuboTV
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
FuboTV, a startup that sells a cable-TV-like “bundle” of live TV you can stream to your laptop, phone or TV, has raised $75 million from a group of investors that includes AMC Networks, 21st Century Fox and Discovery. Traditional VC investors Northzone and Luminari Capital are also in this round.
FuboTV, which had previously raised a total of $75 million, started out as a relatively “skinny” bundle of channels primarily pitched to sports fans (and particularly to soccer fans). It has since transformed into a much less skinny bundle of more than 70 channels, which sells for $45 a month.
That puts it in competition with similar packages from the likes of Hulu, YouTube and AT&T; CEO David Gandler says the company passed the 100,000 subscriber mark last fall, but won’t provide a new number.
The new round is one of many examples of TV programmers showing interest in owning at least some of the distribution companies that will deliver their shows over the internet. Hulu, famously, is owned by four big entertainment companies; Philo, another web TV startup, is partly backed by A&E, Scripps, Discovery, AMC and Viacom. Then there’s Disney, which just launched an ESPN-branded sports streaming service it owns itself, and has a Disney-branded movie-and-TV service scheduled for 2019.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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