(Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc is shutting down its mobile video service go90 less than three years after it launched, a company spokeswoman said.
Verizon's aim was to boost revenue through data usage and targeted advertising from well known brands, but go90 struggled to find a sustained audience and was later put under the umbrella of Verizon's subsidiary Oath Inc.
Go90 had won awards for its content including an Oscar in 2018 for Kobe Bryant's animated film "Dear Basketball".
"Following the creation of Oath, go90 will be discontinued," a company spokeswoman said in an email. "Verizon will 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 was created by Verizon in 2017 after it merged Yahoo with AOL.
Representatives of go90 have begun informing content providers about plans to end both the go90 brand and the video streaming app by July 31, online magazine Digiday reported earlier on Thursday citing four sources familiar with the situation.
It said go90 will return shows and content rights back to its production partners. Verizon has spent about $1.2 billion on Go90 since its 2015 launch, Digiday reported, citing two sources.
(Reporting by Ishita Palli and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; editing by Grant McCool)
