A shocking legal court win for Fubo comes as a U.S. District Court in New York on Friday issued a preliminary injunction to stop Venu Sports, a joint venture from Walt Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.

The new streaming business was to have launched in the coming weeks -- providing live access to some 14 live, linear TV channels offered by the companies, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNEWS, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, Big Ten Network, TNT, TBS and truTV.

Venu Sports -- priced at $42.99 a month for subscribers -- was to start soon, in time for the new NFL and college football seasons.

The main focus of the sports-focused pay TV bundle was to pull in new subscribers -- especially cord-cutting consumers who have been abandoning traditional broad-based pay TV linear TV bundles coming from cable, satellite, and telco providers

Fubo's lawsuit filed in February against the venture claimed that the business would be anti-competitive, and that it was a monopolistic effort coming from three major TV-network based companies that control roughly 60% to 80% of live broadcast sports content.

Fubo is a sports-focused virtual pay TV provider, with 1.6 million subscribers. It launched in January 2015.

“A fair and competitive marketplace is necessary to provide consumers with multiple, robust and more affordable sports streaming options,” says David Gandler, co-founder and CEO of Fubo, in a release, responding to the court decision.  “We will continue to fight for fairness and for what’s best for consumers.”

Responding to the court decision, a DirecTV spokesperson told Television News Daily: “We are pleased with the court decision and believe that it appropriately recognizes the potential harms of allowing major programmers to license their content to an affiliated distributor on more favorable terms than they license their content to third parties.”  

A court date for the antitrust lawsuit has not yet been scheduled.