Fox Buys Roku and Calls It a Streaming Strategy

While Netflix and Disney+ spend billions chasing subscribers, Fox has quietly acquired Roku and declared the slower lane a feature, not a bug.

Fox Corporation has acquired Roku, the connected-TV platform with roughly 90 million active accounts as of its last earnings report.
The deal positions Fox to control both the content and the pipe delivering it, a vertical integration play its rivals have largely avoided.
Fox has repeatedly declined to launch a general-purpose streaming service in the mold of Netflix or Paramount+.
The Hollywood Reporter framed the acquisition as Fox running a distinct streaming race rather than competing directly with the subscription-model giants.
Roku's advertising-supported model aligns with Fox's existing reliance on ad revenue over subscription fees.

Fox Corporation has acquired Roku, the connected-TV hardware and software platform that sits on roughly 90 million active accounts, in a deal the company is positioning as the logical next step in a streaming strategy it has been running quietly while competitors burned cash on subscriber counts.

Fox has never launched a general-purpose subscription streaming service. No Fox equivalent of Peacock, no answer to Paramount+. The stated reasoning, repeated by executives across several earnings calls, is that the ad-supported live model — Fox News, Fox Sports, Tubi — does not require one.

Roku, which earns the majority of its revenue from advertising rather than hardware, fits that thesis without obvious friction. The acquisition gives Fox a distribution layer beneath its own content, meaning it now owns a portion of the remote control sitting on the couch in front of whatever it is broadcasting.

The Hollywood Reporter, covering the deal in a June 2025 analysis, described Fox as “running its own race” — a framing the company has done little to discourage.

What the analysis did not linger on: Roku also carries every streaming service Fox has spent years declining to build.