Nearly three years after Verizon launched Go90 with great fanfare, the carrier will quietly shutter the video service in coming weeks.
Verizon will end the service, which was previously shifted into its Oath media subsidiary, on July 31, according to a report from Variety.
A Verizon official told Variety in a statement that the carrier will instead “focus on building its digital-first brands at scale in sports, finance, news and entertainment for today’s mobile consumers and tomorrow’s 5G applications.”
Oath CEO Tim Armstrong hinted at the end of Go90 earlier this year when he told an industry conference that its content would be redistributed to other Oath properties.
Go90 launched as a free, ad-supported app in the fall of 2015 but never managed to build a sufficient audience despite numerous overhauls and massive spending on content and technology.
Verizon’s CFO said at a different February event that the carrier would focus on digital distribution — particularly live sports — instead of owning content outright. A January report indicated that Verizon was developing a distinct OTT video platform to package content into “channels” for news, sports, entertainment and other themes.