Fox to Acquire Roku, Joining the Battle for the Living Room
Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News and the Fox broadcast network, is buying streaming company Roku for $22 billion, a major deal that would make the Murdoch media empire a formidable contender in the streaming wars.
The cash-and-stock deal, if approved, would be the biggest bet so far for Lachlan Murdoch, the media scion who took over for his father, Rupert Murdoch, in a succession drama that culminated in September after an operatic legal battle with his siblings. It would give Fox Corp. a foothold in more than 100 million households that stream content using devices powered by Roku, whose distinctive black-and-purple remotes are common in living rooms around the world.
The deal combines "the most valuable live content portfolio in video consumption with the preeminent streaming platform through which America watches it," Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox Corp., said in a statement.
The younger Murdoch has for years been orchestrating a series of moves to position the company to reach customers who are abandoning traditional TV.
He has pushed Fox to catch up to competitors like Netflix and Amazon, which have already built major advertising businesses on a streaming platform. In 2020, Fox acquired Tubi, a fast-growing free streaming service, for $440 million. Last year, the company launched Fox One, a streaming service that combined content from Fox News and the company's other TV networks in a single app.
The deal to acquire Roku, which has its own catalog of shows and a big advertising business, would represent one of the most significant changes for the Murdoch family's media empire since 2019, when Disney acquired major parts of 21st Century Fox. It is a sign of empire-building ambition from Murdoch, who so far has struck deals for Fox Corp. on a far smaller scale.
"This move with Roku gets them one more step closer to gaining the necessary scale," Mike Proulx, a vice president at Forrester, said in an interview. "It needs to future-proof itself."
Murdoch and Anthony Wood, Roku's CEO, explained the deal during a question-and-answer session with analysts Monday, but investors didn't seem immediately convinced. Fox's stock fell 14% in morning trading.
Wood, a former Netflix executive who founded Roku in 2002, will join Fox Corp.'s board after the deal closes. Another key Roku executive, Charlie Collier, the company's president, was previously the CEO of Fox Entertainment.
In a statement, Wood called the deal "an extraordinary opportunity to accelerate our vision, scale faster and innovate more aggressively."
Since the Disney deal, which slimmed down the family's media holding significantly, Fox Corp. has focused more narrowly on sports, news and entertainment, along with building up its streaming abilities. The deal with Roku will immediately put Fox Corp. into greater competition with other major providers of connected-TV devices, such as Comcast, which reaches internet and TV customers with proprietary software that binds Comcast to subscribers and provides it with valuable data. As the traditional cable business continues to erode, those devices make TV distributors a key link between customers and streaming services like Netflix and Disney+.
Buying Roku will allow Fox to own a piece of the infrastructure that powers a major chunk of the streaming business. Roku sells TVs that are powered by its proprietary operating system and owns The Roku Channel, a free, ad-supported channel for shows and movies. The company also makes audio devices and sells subscriptions to other streaming services, such as Peacock and Paramount.
The deal with Fox may test Roku's relationships with rival content companies like Netflix and Amazon, because Roku has thrived by establishing itself as a neutral third party in the entertainment industry. During the question-and-answer session, Wood said Roku had experience in that arena, featuring The Roku Channel alongside streaming apps from other media companies.
"It's not a new problem for us," Wood said. "We have historically had owned-and-operated services as well as partner services that we promote on our platform."
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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This story was originally published June 15, 2026 at 10:00 AM.