Fox Closes Roku Deal, Creating New Streaming Power Player

Fox Corp. has completed its $22 billion acquisition of Roku, creating a new power player in media and streaming.

Roku founder Anthony Wood will join Fox’s board and also serve as co-chair of Fox Digital Platforms, the division that will house Roku, Tubi, Fox One and Red Seat Ventures.

“The closing of this acquisition advances the long-term strategy of Fox,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said in a statement. “Beginning today, our top priority for the combined company is to continue to relentlessly serve audiences and partners, while reinforcing the openness and choice that is the essence of the Roku platform. Our shared entrepreneurial passion and clear conviction toward building the future together with our new Roku colleagues gives us great confidence in the opportunities ahead of us.”

“We started Roku more than two decades ago to give people a better way to watch TV, and that mission doesn’t change today,” Wood added. “What does change is our reach and resources. Fox has a deep respect for Roku’s culture and wholly shares our commitment to staying open to every content partner. Our teams will keep building and innovating as they always have, now with the support and capabilities of Fox behind us. I’m proud of what Roku’s employees have built, and I’m excited about what comes next.”

The deal makes Fox into a major player in streaming, with two of the largest free streaming video platforms on the market in Tubi and Roku Channel, a premium streaming service in Fox One, and perhaps most importantly an install base of more than 100 million households around the world. It is no exaggeration to say that Roku is the gateway to TV (inclusive of Netflix, YouTube, Disney+ etc) for a significant chunk of the U.S.

Roku also creates streaming bundles with other services, and lets users subscribe to premium streaming services through their Roku accounts.

Fox will now be able to leverage its advertising capabilities on that ecosystem while seeking to grow its free streaming business.

The deal closed in less than five months, a fast pace for a deal this size. In September, the U.S. Department of Justice was revealed to be reviewing the deal. It has obviously cleared it since then.

The mega-merger has been more than a year in the making, with Wood telling Roku’s board last fall that he as contemplating stepping back from the company. The end result was a sale process, with Wood agreeing to continue serving as an executive in some capacity for an amount of time to be determined.