Fox Buys Roku: The $22 Billion Deal That Changes Streaming and Cinema

Fox Corporation has announced an agreement to acquire Roku in a mixed cash-and-stock transaction valued at approximately $22 billion in enterprise value. The agreed price is $160 per Roku share, with the deal expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approvals.

Reading it as just another streaming merger would be a mistake. Fox is not simply buying an app: it is buying the television operating system through which millions of people decide what to watch. Roku says its platform reaches more than 100 million households worldwide. For Fox, this means entering the core of connected TV, where old linear television has become interface, recommendation, targeted advertising and daily habit.

Fox comes from years in which it avoided the self-destructive subscription war fought in Netflix’s shadow. It focused on sports, news, lower-cost entertainment and Tubi, the free ad-supported service it acquired in 2020. Now it adds The Roku Channel, the home screen and platform technology: less dependence on traditional distributors, more control over content discovery, and more data to sell advertising.

The new streaming war is advertising

The idea of streaming as a race for subscribers has burned billions and produced a mountain of content that often looks interchangeable. The Fox-Roku deal points in another direction: the winner is not whoever owns the entire catalogue, but whoever controls the relationship between screen, user and advertiser, including through live news, sports and digital advertising.

According to the companies, the combination will create one of the largest streaming businesses in the United States by bringing together Tubi and The Roku Channel. The financial promise includes around $400 million in annual synergies once fully implemented, with current Fox shareholders expected to own about 73% of the new entity and Roku shareholders about 27%. Investor-presentation numbers, of course.

Behind those figures sits a clear industrial thesis: FAST TV, free and supported by advertising, is no longer streaming’s poorer cousin. It is the laboratory where the industry is trying to rebuild the lost rent of generalist television.

TV becomes free again, and the remote is worth more than the schedule

Today, censorship is not necessary: it is enough to promote something better, suggest an app first, redirect attention and optimize discovery. The market reaction shows that the deal is not being perceived as risk-free. Some reports noted a decline in Fox shares after the announcement, amid concerns over dilution, debt and the integration of a technology business very different from traditional television.

Fox will finance the cash portion with new debt and available cash, supported by a $12 billion bridge loan. Strategic ambition on one side, financial leverage on the other.

Fox’s acquisition of Roku marks the return of free television as an infrastructure of power: fewer subscriptions, more advertising; less remote control, more algorithm; less schedule, more interface. After selling parts of Hollywood to Disney, Fox is re-entering the game through distribution.