Fox closes its $22bn Roku takeover months ahead of schedule.
Fox Corporation completed its $22bn acquisition of Roku on 6 November, putting the connected TV platform alongside Fox's live sports, news and Tubi. Roku's shares stopped trading on Nasdaq the same day.
Under the merger terms, Roku stockholders receive $95.30 in cash and 0.9799 Fox Class A shares for each Roku share. Existing Fox stockholders now own about 74% of the company and former Roku holders about 26%. Roku moves into a new division, Fox Digital Platforms, which also holds Tubi, Fox One and Red Seat Ventures. Roku founder Anthony Wood joins Fox's board and co-chairs the division with Paul Cheesbrough, who is co-chair and chief executive. Fox expects about $400m in annual run-rate cost savings within two years of closing, and says the deal should add to free cash flow per share by the second full year.
Fox says Roku's platform reaches more than 100 million households worldwide, and Adweek reports that the combined business ranks third in US television by share of viewing. When the deal was announced in June, the companies expected it to close in the first half of 2027, according to TechCrunch, which also notes that the US Justice Department had asked both sides for more information two months ago. Fox says Roku will remain an open platform for the wider streaming industry, and Wood says Fox shares Roku's commitment to staying open to every content partner.
What Fox hasn't set out yet is how Roku's ad sales and first-party data will work with Fox's own inventory and Tubi's, or whether advertisers will be able to buy them as one package. Rival media owners will also be watching how the openness pledge holds once Roku shares an owner with a broadcaster that competes for the same budgets.
Our read: the direct effect in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf is small, because Roku's business is built mainly on North America. The bigger signal is that a broadcaster has bought a TV operating system to own the screen, the data and the ad sale together, a model regional broadcasters and telcos with their own set-top boxes and apps will recognise.
Why it matters
One owner now holds a major US streaming platform, Tubi and Fox's live sports, which changes how connected TV inventory and audience data can be packaged and sold to advertisers.
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