Fox buys Roku for $22 billion and pledges to keep the platform open

Fox buys Roku for roughly $22 billion. The acquisition closed on Friday, November 6, 2026, in one of the biggest deals of the year in streaming and connected TV. With the closing, Roku shares cease trading on the Nasdaq. The platform becomes part of the Fox group.

Fox buys Roku: the terms of the deal

Under the terms of the deal, each Roku share (Class A and Class B) was converted into $95.30 in cash and 0.9799 shares of Fox Class A common stock. As a result, former Roku shareholders hold about 26% of Fox's shares, while Fox shareholders keep the remaining approximately 74%.

The closing came months ahead of schedule: when the deal was announced on June 15, 2026, it was expected to close only in the first half of 2027. Shareholder approval from both companies in October and clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sped up the timetable.

Fox buys Roku and gains direct access to a platform present in more than 100 million streaming households. Combined with Tubi, the free ad-supported service Fox already owns, which has 110 million monthly active users, the deal creates one of the world's largest free streaming groups: together, Tubi and Roku accounted for 4.8% of streaming viewership in August, tied with Disney and behind only Netflix and YouTube, according to Nielsen. Including linear TV, the combined company accounted for 8.5% of total TV viewership that month, the fourth-largest media distributor, behind YouTube, Skydance and Disney.

Fox has created a new division, FOX Digital Platforms, bringing together Roku, Tubi, Fox One and Red Seat Ventures. Roku founder Anthony Wood joins the Fox board and will serve as co-chair of the new division, alongside Paul Cheesbrough, who becomes co-chair and CEO of the unit.

"We started Roku more than two decades ago to give people a better way to watch TV, and that mission doesn't change today. What does change is our reach and resources," Wood said. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said the priority is to "continue to relentlessly serve audiences and partners, while reinforcing the openness and choice that is the essence of the Roku platform."

An open platform by commitment

DOJ clearance came with commitments to preserve the platform's neutrality: Fox committed to keep third-party content on Roku for at least three years, not to discriminate against other companies' content in search results, to let users rearrange apps on the home screen, and to maintain contractual protections over partners' sensitive data for the same period. According to the DOJ, the entry of new free streaming services would be enough to make a substantial risk of harm to competition unlikely.

Financially, Fox expects about $400 million in annual run-rate cost savings within two years and for the deal to become accretive to free cash flow per share from the second full year after closing. In Friday trading, Fox Class A shares rose 1.83% to $66.43, while Roku shares closed at $160.30.

Fox buys Roku: what changes in streaming

The deal marks Fox's return to large-scale entertainment, years after selling the 21st Century Fox studio to Disney in 2019 for $71 billion. Now, with The Roku Channel and Tubi under the same roof, the company controls two of the leading free streaming services. Fox buys Roku and now also controls the operating system that brings that content to the screens of more than 100 million households.

Image credit: Roku logo. Image: Roku, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Transparency note: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, cross-checked against public posts on X and sources on the internet. The facts are confirmed by Fox's official announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice statement and independent outlets; consult the original sources to verify the details.

By Muse