Fox to Acquire Roku, Joining the Battle for the Living Room
Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News and the Fox broadcast network, is buying the streaming company Roku for $22 billion, a major deal that would make the Murdoch media empire a formidable contender in the streaming wars.The cash-and-stock deal, if approved, would be the biggest bet so far for Lachlan Murdoch, the media scion who took over for his father, Rupert Murdoch, in a succession drama that culminated in September after an operatic legal battle with his siblings.It would give Fox Corp.
a foothold in more than 100 million households that stream content using devices powered by Roku, whose distinctive black-and-purple remotes are common in living rooms around the world.The deal combines “the most valuable live content portfolio in video consumption with the pre-eminent streaming platform through which America watches it,” Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox Corp., said in a statement.The younger Mr.Murdoch has for years been orchestrating a series of moves to position the company to reach customers who are abandoning traditional TV.He has pushed Fox to catch up to competitors like Netflix and Amazon, which have already built major advertising businesses on a streaming platform.
In 2020, Fox acquired Tubi, a fast-growing free streaming service, for $440 million.Last year, the company launched Fox One, a streaming service that combined content from Fox News and the company’s other TV networks in a single app.The deal to acquire Roku, which has its own catalog of shows and a big advertising business, would represent one of the most significant changes for the Murdoch family’s media empire since 2019, when Disney acquired major parts of 21st Century Fox.
It is a sign of empire-building ambition from Mr.Murdoch, who so far has struck deals for Fox Corp.
on a far smaller scale.“This move with Roku gets them one more step closer to gaining the necessary scale,” Mike Proulx, a vice president at Forrester, said in an interview.“It needs t...