Fox Buys Roku, a deal valued at $22 billion
Fox Corp. acquired streaming platform Roku, a deal valued at $22 billion, well ahead of the expected 2027 date., reports Variety.
Variety adds that Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood will join the Fox board of directors. He will serve as co-chair, Fox Digital Platforms, a newly formed division that includes Roku, Tubi, Fox One, Red Seat Ventures and other digital products and services across the company, alongside Paul Cheesbrough, who assumes the role of co-chair and CEO of the division.
“The closing of this acquisition advances the long-term strategy of Fox,” Lachlan Murdoch, executive chair and CEO of Fox Corp., said in a statement .
According to Variety: "Fox Corp. emphasized its pledge that it will preserve Roku “as a leading open ecosystem for the broader streaming industry.” That means that, say, it won’t automatically give exclusive or advantageous positioning to Fox News or the Fox One streaming package on Roku, which has a customer base of more than 100 million households.
"The Roku deal will dramatically beef up Fox’s streaming footprint and give it the opportunity to increase scale in the free, ad-supported streaming space through Fox’s Tubi and the Roku Channel. With Roku, Fox overnight is now a much bigger player in digital video advertising as well as key distributor of premium subscription streaming services."
