Fox buys Roku in a bet on ad-supported streaming

What happened

Fox Corp. said Monday it was buying streaming and smart-TV company Roku for $22 billion, its first major acquisition since chief executive Lachlan Murdoch cemented control of his family’s media empire last year. The deal will give Fox, with its news and live sports content, a foothold in the more than 100 million households that use Roku’s platform.

Who said what

The cash-and-stock deal “would make the Murdoch media empire a formidable contender in the streaming wars,” positioning Fox to “reach customers who are abandoning traditional TV,” The New York Times said. Specifically, it would transform the company into a “major player in free, ad-supported streaming,” The Washington Post said, combining Fox-owned Tubi with Roku’s own “free-to-stream, ad-supported offering.”

Fox’s “bigger play here is advertising revenue, something all the major streamers are now jockeying for,” Forrester research director Mike Proulx said in a statement. “If this deal closes, Fox will control more of what viewers watch, how they discover it and how it gets monetized.”

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What next?

Fox and Roku said their merger, expected to close in the first half of 2027, would create the “third-largest player in U.S. television by share of viewing.”