Fox Corp. agreed Monday to acquire Roku for roughly $22 billion, paying $160 a share in a cash-and-stock deal that pairs the Murdoch family's news and sports channels with the largest connected-television platform in the United States and pulls Fox decisively into the streaming distribution business.
The transaction values Roku's enterprise at about $22 billion and gives Fox shareholders 73 percent of the combined company, with Roku holders taking the remaining 27 percent. Fox will raise $8 billion in new debt to fund the cash portion, the companies said, and expects to close in the first half of 2027. It is Fox's largest deal since it sold its entertainment assets to Walt Disney for $71 billion in 2019, and it reshapes a portfolio that until Monday consisted mainly of the Fox broadcast network, Fox News and the free ad-supported streamer Tubi.
What Fox gets
Roku reaches more than 100 million streaming households worldwide and operates The Roku Channel, a free ad-supported service that competes directly with Tubi. The combination, the companies said, will create the third-largest player in U.S. television by share of viewing, spanning broadcast, cable, local stations and streaming. It also hands Fox the first-party viewing data and the home-screen real estate that come with Roku's operating system, two assets the broadcaster has lacked as advertising spending continues to migrate from linear television to connected TV.
Lachlan K. Murdoch, Fox's executive chair and chief executive, called the acquisition a "defining moment" for the company on a Monday morning analyst call, saying it "pairs Fox, the leader in live news and sports, with Roku, the leading connected TV platform." Murdoch said the deal extended a strategy of "focus over scales's sake" that began with Fox's $440 million purchase of Tubi in 2020 and the launch last year of the direct-to-consumer service Fox One. "We are seeing a clear consumer preference for aggregation," Murdoch said. "Consumers are gravitating towards simpler, more unified experiences on their favorite platforms like Roku."
On the call
Anthony Wood, Roku's founder and chief executive, told analysts the company was selling "from a position of strength" and described the tie-up as "the best way to accelerate our long-term strategy and continue shaping the future of television." Roku stock rose about 2 percent in premarket trading, signaling that holders viewed the $160 price as close to fair.
The price implies a sharp reversal for Fox, which sold its own 6 million Roku shares at $58 each in 2020 to help finance the Tubi deal. LightShed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield, who flagged Fox as a likely Roku bidder on Friday, wrote that a Roku purchase "would enable Fox to meaningfully reposition its narrative with investors toward a streaming future that began with its Tubi acquisition," adding that it would be "ironic if Fox bought Roku now."
The pushback
Fox shareholders pushed back hard. The company's stock fell about 13 percent in premarket trading after the announcement, an early sign that investors view the price, the $8 billion debt load and the strategic pivot away from a pure live-news-and-sports model as expensive bets. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Fox has spent nearly a decade pitching itself as a smaller, more focused operator after the Disney transaction; the Roku deal asks holders to underwrite a much larger and more capital-intensive business, with regulatory review and a 2027 close still ahead. The reporting Monday came primarily from Fox's and Roku's own executives and from analysts who had publicly bet on the deal; competing bidders, antitrust authorities and Roku device partners had not weighed in by midday.
What's next
The companies said they expect to close in the first half of 2027, pending shareholder votes and regulatory clearance. The deal lands three days after the Justice Department closed its investigation of Paramount Skydance's roughly $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, a back-to-back stretch that has now put two of the largest U.S. media combinations on record in front of antitrust reviewers.