Fox Corporation has reached for one of the bigger prizes in streaming recently, striking a deal on Monday to buy Roku for roughly $22 billion dollars in enterprise value. The agreement sets the price at $160 a Roku share, paid through a mix of cash and Fox Class A common stock (the company’s standard, publicly traded stock).
What the move stitches together is hard to overstate. Fox brings the country’s most-watched portfolio of live sports and news, along with its free streaming service Tubi. Roku, meanwhile, brings the connected TV platform that already sits inside more than 100 million streaming households around the world, along with The Roku Channel.
On paper, the combined business slots in as the third-largest player in the U.S. television scene by share of viewing.
Lachlan K. Murdoch, the executive chair and chief executive of Fox, framed the deal as the next move in a long-running plan rather than a sudden pivot. “This is a defining moment for FOX, and a natural extension of the deliberate and focused strategy we have been executing for nearly a decade,” Murdoch said in a statement.
Murdoch also leaned on the financial side of the picture, stressing that Fox is doing this without rattling its balance sheet.
From the other side of the table, Anthony Wood, Roku’s founder, chairman, and chief executive, sounded like a man closing one chapter and opening another. “I’m incredibly proud of what our team has built, and the combination with FOX is an extraordinary opportunity to accelerate our vision, scale faster, and innovate more aggressively for viewers, partners, and advertisers,” Wood noted.
The funding and ownership breakdown
Under the agreement, the transaction is valued at $160 per Roku share, and Roku shareholders will receive $96 in cash and 0.9693 shares of Fox Class A common stock for every Roku share held.
The stock leg is valued at approximately $64 per Roku share, based on the 10-day volume-weighted average price of Fox Class A stock as of June 10. Once the deal closes, existing Fox shareholders will own approximately 73% of the combined company, with Roku shareholders holding the remaining 27%.
Both boards have unanimously signed off on the deal. Wood will continue playing a crucial role at the combined company and will also join Fox’s board.
There are still hurdles in the way before any of this becomes real. The deal needs sign-off from both companies’ shareholders and regulatory clearances in the United States and certain markets abroad, along with the usual gauntlet of closing conditions. Wood and a cluster of associated trusts and entities, which together control a majority of the Roku voting power, have already signed a voting and support agreement backing the deal. LGC Holdco LLC has signed a similar agreement covering the issuance of Fox shares.
The deal is expected to close in the first half of calendar 2027, with Roku continuing to operate as an open, partner-friendly platform after it closes, while Fox content will continue to flow across its existing distribution channels.
Sources: PR Newswire, Roku, Fox