NEW YORK – Fox Corporation has agreed to buy Tubi, a free ad-supported streaming service, for approximately $440 million in net cash. The Tubi deal is part of FOX’s long-term strategic initiative to broaden and enhance FOX’s direct-to-consumer digital reach and engagement.
FOX will finance the deal by selling its stake in Roku, a maker of digital media players.
Tubi, based in San Francisco and currently available on more than 25 digital platforms in the United States, features over 20,000 titles and 56,000 hours of film and television programming from over 250 content partners, including many of the major studios. Tubi has a younger-skewing user base that spends over 160 million hours per month watching content on the service.
Tubi has grown quickly over the past year as more users look to stream content online, doubling the service’s usage and monetization over the last 12 months.
The deal with Tubi allows it to take adavantage of FOX’s capabilities in key areas such as digital advertising, direct-to-consumer interfaces and personalization technology. Similarly, Tubi will be able to fully leverage FOX’s advertising and distribution relationships, as well as its formidable national and local promotional platforms, to further augment the service’s growth trajectory.
FOX plans to continue to run Tubi as an independent service anchored by its robust consumer offering of licensed entertainment content. FOX will evaluate opportunities to expand the Tubi offering not through original content, but rather in a cost-effective manner by leveraging our expertise in national and local news and sports programming.
Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fox Corporation, Lachlan Murdoch commented: “Tubi will immediately expand our direct-to-consumer audience and capabilities and will provide our advertising partners with more opportunities to reach audiences at scale. Importantly, coupled with the combined power of FOX’s existing networks, Tubi provides a substantial base from which we will drive long-term growth in the direct-to-consumer arena.”
Tubi Founder and CEO Farhad Massoudi, who will continue to head Tubi, added: “Fox Corporation’s relationships with advertisers and distribution partners, combined with the company’s dominance in news and sports programming, will help Tubi continue to grow and differentiate itself in the high-growth ad-supported streaming marketplace. I am proud of what the team has already accomplished here at Tubi and we couldn’t be more excited about joining such a fast-moving, entrepreneurial company. We look forward to working together with FOX to accelerate Tubi’s leadership position in the market and bring new competencies to FOX.”
On the sale of FOX’s ownership stake in Roku, Murdoch said: “We were an early investor in Roku and continue to admire the ongoing accomplishments of Anthony Wood and his team. We are pleased to expand our partnership with them as a result of the Tubi acquisition.”
