Surprise! Fox Corp. announced Friday that it had completed the acquisition of streaming platform Roku, a transaction valued at $22 billion, well ahead of the planned 2027 date.
Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood will join Fox’s board of directors. He will serve as co-president of Fox Digital Platforms, a newly created division that includes Roku, Tubi, Fox One, Red Seat Ventures and other digital products and services within the company, alongside Paul Cheesbrough, who assumes the role of co-president and CEO of the division.
“Completing this acquisition advances Fox’s long-term strategy,” Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corp., said in a statement Friday.
Fox Corp. emphasized its commitment to preserving Roku “as a leading open ecosystem for the broader streaming industry.” This means that, for example, it will not automatically grant 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 significantly strengthen Fox’s streaming footprint and give it the opportunity to increase the scale of the free, ad-supported streaming space through Fox’s Tubi and the Roku Channel. With Roku, Fox is now a much bigger player in digital video advertising as well as a key distributor of premium subscription streaming services.
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“Starting today, our top priority for the combined company is to continue to tirelessly serve audiences and partners, while reinforcing the openness and choice that are the essence of the Roku platform,” Murdoch said. “Our shared entrepreneurial passion and clear belief in building the future with our new colleagues at Roku give us great confidence in the opportunities that lie ahead.”
Under Fox Digital Platforms, Roku will be led by CEO Mustafa Ozgen, former president of Roku devices, products and technologies, according to a Cheesbrough memo obtained by Variety. Among other management changes, Charlie Collier, president of Roku Media, and Anjali Sud, CEO of Tubi, are leaving the combined company.
Fox Corp. said it expects to realize about $400 million in annualized cost synergies within two years of closing the Roku deal, suggesting layoffs are in the offing. Fox also said there was potential for increased revenue with the consolidation of Roku’s businesses and that it expected the acquisition to contribute to free cash flow per share by the second full year after closing.
Wood said in a statement: “We launched Roku more than two decades ago to give people a better way to watch TV, and that mission doesn’t change today. What does change is our reach and resources. Fox has a deep respect for Roku’s culture and fully shares our commitment to remaining open to all content partners. Our teams will continue to build and innovate as they always have, now with the support and capabilities of Fox behind us. I’m proud of what the people at Roku have been building and I’m excited about what’s coming next.”
The onus is certainly on Fox Corp. to preserve Roku’s arms dealer status as a front-end to a ubiquitous array of content and streaming services, including Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, HBO Max and more.
Through the first nine months of 2026, Roku beat financial forecasts, generating revenue growth of 23% over the period to reach $4.1 billion in sales. About 49% of this amount came from advertising and 40% from subscriptions. In the third quarter, Roku’s total gross profit was $649 million, up 24%, and Roku generated net profit of $183 million, a seven-fold increase from the year-ago quarter.
In June, Fox announced the agreement to buy Roku for $160/share, for a combination of approximately $14.2 billion in cash and the remainder in Fox Class A common stock. Shareholders of both companies approved the deal on October 14.
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