Venu Sports, the sports streaming joint venture between Disney’s ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp., will cost $42.99 a month.

The upcoming streaming platform announced its pricing on Thursday and said it plans to launch in the fall. It will offer a 7-day free trial. Further details are expected to be released when it launches. Venu is still pending regulatory approval.

The goal is for Venu Sports to become available ahead of the start of the NFL season, which begins on Thursday, Sept. 5, according to a person familiar with the matter. Fox holds the rights to Sunday NFL games, while ESPN is the broadcaster of Monday Night Football.

CNBC earlier reported the service would likely start at between $45 and $50 a month.

The high-end pricing — common in direct-to-consumer sports streaming services — was expected in part so it wouldn’t shake up any carriage agreements with traditional pay TV distributors. Live sports remain the highest rated TV programming and are the most costly part of the pay TV bundle. In turn, media rights valuations have ballooned, most recently the NBA’s 11-year, $77 billion package.

Users who sign up for Venu at $42.99 a month will have access to that entry pricing for 12 months, Venu noted Thursday — signaling there could be price increases ahead.

“Targeted at sports fans outside the traditional pay TV bundle, Venu is planning a launch in the U.S. in the fall and will offer thousands of live sports events from all the major professional sports leagues and top college conferences,” the company said in Thursday’s release.

The three media companies, which announced the joint venture in February, each own a one-third stake in Venu, which is run as its own company with its own management team. Former Apple and Hulu executive Pete Distad was appointed CEO. The subsidiary announced the name Venu in May.

The platform will include the entirety of the portfolio of live sports rights owned by its parent companies, including the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, college football and basketball, among others. Venu subscribers will also have access to 14 traditional TV sports networks of its parent companies, including ESPN, ABC, Fox, TNT and TBS, as well as the streaming service ESPN+.

“With an impressive portfolio of sports programming, Venu will provide sports fans in the U.S. with a single destination for watching many of the most sought-after games and events,” said Distad said in a news release. “We’re building Venu from the ground up for fans who want seamless access to watch the sports they love, and we will launch at a compelling price point that will appeal to the cord cutter and cord never fans currently not served by existing pay TV packages.”

Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are also planning to bundle their streaming services, Max, Disney+ and Hulu. The upcoming bundle will be priced at $16.99 a month with ads, and $29.99 a month ad-free.

CarShield, a company that sells vehicle service contracts to automobile owners that it claims will cover the cost of certain repairs, has agreed to pay $10 million in a settlement with federal regulators over charges that its marketing tactics were deceptive and misleading.

In a statement Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission said CarShield, which employs celebrity endorsers including rapper and actor Ice-T and sports commentator Chris Berman, had falsely lured customers with the promise of ‘peace of mind’ and ‘protection’ from the cost and inconvenience of vehicle breakdowns through its contracts.

The FTC also charged American Auto Shield, LLC (AAS), the administrator of CarShield’s vehicle service contracts, in the scheme.

The agency said that at least one ad, which ran 18,000 times on television, stated, ‘With CarShield’s administrators, they make sure you don’t get stuck with expensive car repair bills like this.’ It also touted CarShield contracts as ‘your best line of defense against expensive breakdowns.’

Yet many purchasers discovered that their repairs were not covered, despite making payments of up to $120 per month for CarShield’s product, the FTC said. 

‘Instead of delivering the ‘peace of mind’ promised by its advertisements, CarShield left many consumers with a financial headache,’ Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.

‘Worse still, CarShield used trusted personalities to deliver its empty promises,’ Levine said. ‘The FTC will hold advertisers accountable for using false or deceptive claims to exploit consumers’ financial anxieties.”

In a statement, CarShield said that while it disagreed with ‘many’ of the FTC’s assertions, it shares the agency’s ‘commitment to helping customers fully understand exactly what we provide and the value we offer.’

It said that its marketing efforts now include additional details about the elements of typically covered car repair and that full plans are now ‘easily viewed prior to making a purchase decision.’

And it said it had expanded its Shield Repair Network ‘by adding more than 10,000 preferred car repair shops, and added a concierge system to help customers quickly locate a repair facility convenient for them.’

A representative for AAS did not respond to a request for comment.

CarShield, based in Missouri, has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau — but the company’s BBB listing features more than 300 pages of complaints and a 1.6 out of 5 customer rating. A recent report from WDAF-TV of Kansas City, Missouri, said CarShield had sued the BBB, with the case being settled out of court.

American Auto Shield, based in Colorado, likewise has a 2.9 customer rating despite an official A+ rating from the BBB.

Federal Reserve officials said Wednesday that while there are signs the economy is slowing, the Fed was not yet ready to cut its key interest rate.

Yet even as it held rates at their current level of about 5.5%, the Federal Open Market Committee’s latest statement included changes in language that acknowledged growing signs of economic weakness that suggest a greater willingness to consider lowering borrowing costs.

Notably, the FOMC observed some deterioration in labor-market conditions.

“Job gains have moderated, and the unemployment rate has moved up but remains low,” it said in the statement Wednesday.

At 4.1%, the unemployment rate is at its highest level since February 2018, though still below levels that would suggest a recession.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that while layoff activity remained subdued in June, the hiring rate in the economy has slowed to a level not seen since 2014. The percentage of unemployed workers who have gone without roles for 27 weeks or more has recently begun to surge, with about 1.5 million total workers now in that category.

Yet the FOMC said Wednesday it would not budge “until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent,” a line Fed officials have repeated previously. 

In a note to clients after the statement was released, Omair Sharif, founder and president of the Inflation Insights research group, said the Fed had taken a ‘baby step’ toward a cut that traders have bet will come in September.

‘I expect that further good news on the inflation front in July should set up the Chair to deliver a more meaningful signal that a rate cut in September is very likely,’ Sharif wrote.

Likewise, Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management financial group, said the statement ‘cracks the door open to the September cut that everyone is expecting.’

In remarks following the statement’s release Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged a rate cut ‘could be on the table for September’ but said monetary policymakers ‘just need to see more good data.’

In recent testimony to Congress, Powell acknowledged that central bank officials had started the clock on lowering rates, saying acting “too late or too little could unduly weaken economic activity and employment.”

The Federal Reserve helps set the interest rates that determine how much it costs consumers and businesses to borrow money for products and services.

For the past two years, it has sought to fight inflation by keeping interest rates elevated, in essence fighting fire with fire: By making borrowing more expensive, it has cooled demand in the economy and thus slowed the rate at which prices have increased.

Now, the Fed is signaling that the higher rates have done their job on the inflation front — and that keeping them aflame could lead to unnecessary damage to the rest of the economy.

Wall Street traders have signaled for weeks that a September rate cut is a virtual certainty, according to data from the financial services company CME Group.

But influential former Fed officials have begun calling for a more rapid timeline. Bill Dudley, a former New York Federal Reserve president, wrote this month that a rate cut should occur before September. In a Bloomberg News op-ed, Dudley said he had ‘changed his mind,’ with unemployment creeping higher and with all but the wealthiest households having depleted their immediate post-pandemic financial cushions.

‘Although it might already be too late to fend off a recession by cutting rates, dawdling now unnecessarily increases the risk,’ Dudley wrote.

This week, Alan Blinder, a Fed vice chair in the Clinton administration, said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the time to cut is now.

‘Why wait?’ Blinder asked, declaring the two-year fight against pandemic-induced inflation over as ‘the economy seems to be simmering down.’

Cutting rates would only be a matter of heading off a negative economic outcome: Companies have signaled that there’s upside, too.

Sectors whose success is especially sensitive to interest rates and consumer credit, like the housing and automotive markets, have shown particular weakness — including signals from companies in those industries that they expect sales to ramp up again once interest rates begin to fall.

“There is now a higher probability of interest rate relief beginning in September,” said Dave Foulkes, CEO of Brunswick Corp., a boat-making specialist. While new cuts would most likely have only a minor impact on 2024 results because peak season will have passed, they’d be “a potential tailwind for 2025.”

The Fed will announce the results of the Open Market Committee meeting at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

The United Auto Workers has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris over Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump.

The union’s endorsement shouldn’t be surprising. UAW President Shawn Fain has been outspoken against Trump. The Detroit union also has historically supported Democrats, including President Joe Biden.

It comes after Biden withdrew his re-election bid and endorsed Harris to become the Democratic nominee against Trump.

Fain and Trump have been at odds — publicly trading remarks — since the union leader was elected early last year. Trump called for Fain to be fired during a speech earlier this month at the Republican National Convention.

The union responded with a post calling Trump a “scab and a billionaire,” continuing “that’s who he represents. We know which side we’re on. Not his.”

Quickly after Biden dropped out of the election, the UAW praised him and showed support for Harris, who walked a picket line with union members during a strike in 2019.

“The path forward is clear: we will defeat Donald Trump and his billionaire agenda and elect a champion for the working class to the highest office in this country,” the union said in a statement July 21 after Biden had dropped out of the 2024 race. That statement stopped short of formally endorsing Harris.

The UAW’s endorsement is crucial for any candidate looking to secure the battleground state of Michigan, because of the UAW’s potential influence there. The Detroit-based union has roughly 370,000 active members and 580,000 retired members, many of which reside in the Midwest.

Michigan voters helped both Biden and Trump to win the White House during the past two presidential elections.