Fox acquires Roku for $22 billion to expand in smart TVs and advertising

Fox Corporation has agreed to buy Roku Inc. for $160 per share, an enterprise value of approximately $22 billion, the companies announced.

The deal unites Fox's broadcast channels — including Fox, Fox News, Fox Business, and FS1 — as well as its streaming businesses, including Tubi (a free ad-supported streaming TV platform Fox bought in 2020), with Roku's own FAST service, The Roku Channel, and Roku's streaming hardware business, which includes streaming sticks and smart TVs.

Roku says its platform is used by 100 million households. The most valuable part of Roku's business is not its hardware, which lost $19.1 million in the quarter ending March 31, 2026, but its operating system (Roku OS) and advertising business. In that same quarter, Roku's advertising and subscriptions business posted a gross profit of $584.1 million, with advertising revenue alone reaching $371 million.

The COVID-19 pandemic helped Roku become profitable in 2021, but the company did not see annual profitability again until 2025. The planned merger aims to help Roku scale and maintain profitability more easily by enabling Roku "to execute on our strategy faster than we would otherwise by ourselves, even though we're doing extremely well," said Anthony Wood, Roku's CEO, during a call with investors.

"Fox and Roku are committed to continuing to operate Roku as an open, partner-friendly platform and to the continued ubiquitous distribution of Fox content. On a pro forma basis, the combined company will become the third-largest player in US television by share of viewing," the announcement said. The reference appears to be to Nielsen data for March, which showed the top distributors as YouTube (13.2%), The Walt Disney Company (10.5%), and NBCUniversal/Versant (8.4%). Fox was in fourth place (7.2%), and The Roku Channel was in ninth (3%).