Fox acquires Roku in a $22bn deal that drags the cable-reliant broadcaster squarely into streaming. Fox Corporation will pay $160 a share, in cash and stock, for the maker of the streaming sticks and smart TVs sitting in more than 100 million households worldwide, the companies said on Monday.
The structure is $96 in cash plus 0.9693 Fox Class A shares for each Roku share, an enterprise value of about $22bn. Fox shareholders will own roughly 73 per cent of the combined company and Roku holders about 27 per cent. Fox has lined up $12bn in bridge financing from Morgan Stanley, expects to close in the first half of 2027, and will put Roku founder Anthony Wood on its board.
Why Fox wants Roku
Fox is buying a front door. Roku’s platform reaches more than half of all US broadband homes, and it is where many people land before they pick an app. That position, not the hardware, is the prize.
The money tells the same story. Roku makes most of its revenue from advertising and distribution, not devices: its platform segment brought in $4.1bn last year, 87.5 per cent of the total. Owning it hands Fox a connected-TV ad business, first-party viewer data, and a home screen to push its own services. Fold in Fox’s live sport and news, the NFL, MLB, the FIFA World Cup, and Fox News, plus its free streamer Tubi and The Roku Channel, and the pair claim one of the largest streaming businesses in the country.
