Six years ago Fox dumped its Roku shares to help pay for Tubi. Now it is paying about $22 billion to own the whole platform.
Fox is acquiring Roku for $160 a share, an enterprise value near $22 billion, betting its live sports and news can supercharge the streaming platform’s reach. The cash-and-stock deal hands Fox a direct line to over 100 million streaming households and would make it the third-largest player in U.S. TV viewing.
Picture the boardroom mood. In 2020, Fox quietly sold its Roku stake at $58 a share to scrape together cash for a scrappy little free streamer called Tubi. On June 15, 2026, the same company agreed to buy all of Roku at $160 a share. That is the kind of plot twist that makes a CFO laugh, then check the math twice.
What Happened
Fox Corporation and Roku announced a definitive agreement for Fox to acquire Roku for $160.00 per share, valuing the streaming company at roughly $22 billion in enterprise value. Fox will pay $96.00 in cash (about $14.2 billion) plus 0.9693 shares of Fox Class A stock for each Roku share. The stock piece works out to $64.00 per Roku share based on a $66.03 reference price.
When the dust settles, existing Fox shareholders are expected to own about 73% of the combined company and Roku holders roughly 27%. Both boards approved the deal unanimously, and Roku founder Anthony Wood will join the Fox board after closing.
The Backstory
Fox has been an early Roku believer since 2013. Then in 2020 it sold its 5% stake, six million shares at $58 each, to help fund the $440 million purchase of Tubi. That bet paid off. Tubi now has more than 100 million monthly users and became one of streaming’s quiet success stories.
Lachlan Murdoch, Fox’s executive chair and CEO, has spent nearly a decade narrowing the company around live news and sports: the NFL, MLB, NASCAR, Big Ten, the FIFA World Cup, Fox News, and Fox Business. The missing piece was always distribution, the pipes that carry that content into living rooms. Roku is exactly that pipe.
The Plan
The logic is aggregation. Fox makes appointment-viewing content, Roku owns the home screen, the operating system, and a direct relationship with viewers across more than half of all U.S. broadband households. Bolt them together and you get content plus distribution plus first-party ad data under one roof.
Fox projects roughly $400 million in run-rate cost synergies, free cash flow accretion by the second full year after closing, and a continued investment-grade balance sheet. It lined up a $12 billion bridge financing facility from Morgan Stanley and expects pro forma net leverage around 2.8x. Murdoch is calling it a “defining moment.” The deal is targeted to close in the first half of 2027.
The Business Model Angle
Here is the pattern worth bookmarking: when content gets commoditized, the money migrates to whoever controls discovery and distribution. Fox is not buying more shows. It is buying the storefront, the operating system, and the viewer data that turns ads into a high-margin business. Owning the rails beats renting them.
For founders, the lesson is brutal and useful. A great product is not a moat if someone else controls how customers find it. Roku spent two decades building the gateway to the living room, and that gateway, not the hardware, is what just sold for $22 billion. Distribution is the asset. Everything else is rented.
The Risk
Now the honest part. Fox is buying back at $160 what it sold at $58, paying a steep premium for a position it once held for free. Optics aside, the deal carries real integration risk, a $12 billion debt bridge, and leverage near 2.8x at a time when streaming economics are still volatile.
Regulators get a long look too, with U.S. and certain non-U.S. approvals required before a 2027 close. And there is a quieter tension: Roku promises to stay an “open, partner-friendly platform,” but it will now be owned by Fox, a direct content competitor to Netflix, Disney, and everyone else living on Roku’s home screen. Keeping rivals comfortable on a platform your owner competes with is a tricky balancing act.
Quick Questions
How much is Fox actually paying for Roku?
$160 per share, about $22 billion in enterprise value. The structure is $96 in cash plus 0.9693 Fox Class A shares for every Roku share.
Why does Fox want Roku so badly?
Distribution and data. Roku reaches over 100 million global streaming households and owns the home screen, the OS, and direct viewer relationships, which is gold for targeted advertising.
Wait, didn’t Fox already own part of Roku?
Yes. Fox held a stake from 2013 and sold it at $58 a share in 2020 to fund the Tubi acquisition. It is now buying the whole company at nearly three times that price.
When does the deal close?
Fox expects it to close in the first half of 2027, pending shareholder votes and U.S. and international regulatory approvals.
The Business Model Analyst Take
Fox just paid up to fix the one weakness in its empire: it made the content but never owned the pipe. The takeaway for operators is to never confuse making the product with controlling how it reaches people. Roku’s real value was never the dongle. It was the doorway, and doorways command a premium.
