Fox Sports has seemingly gotten a big boost from its parent company’s acquisition of Roku, bolstering the pitch the company can make to leagues like the NFL and MLB.
While questions remain about the still-smaller scale of the Fox Corp. business in comparison to Disney’s ESPN and especially streamers like Netflix, YouTube and Prime Video, the longtime broadcaster of NFL Sundays, the World Series and big-time college football should be able to use the Roku acquisition to improve its advertising business and overall distribution reach.
In an appearance on Awful Announcing’s podcast, The Play-By-Play LIVE, last week, CNBC reporter Lillian Rizzo laid out Fox’s formula with the Roku deal and why the onus is also partially on leagues to “lean in” to more creative distribution models like the one Fox could soon offer with its linear and cable networks alongside Roku Channel, Tubi and its Fox One app.
The first clear boon will be with advertising, Rizzo said.
“Advertising is what’s really propelling so much of this,” she explained. “You’re going to do these huge sports rights deal, how are you going to make up for it? You’re going to make up for it from advertising, and not just for the Super Bowl, but across the board. And so I think that will be pretty powerful for Fox, too, is now they have this bigger advertising engine between their own and Roku.”
But Fox will also need to figure out how to integrate Roku Channel and Tubi together, and within the broader Fox flywheel.
“I wonder how Tubi and Roku Channel are going to act together. They both have a lot of viewership, and different types of viewership,” Rizzo said.
“Tubi’s more on-demand and Roku is more going through the channels … which is more of a sports experience. I have to imagine that just the power of that homepage is going to do a lot. You see it on other platforms … and Fox is growing the Fox One app. I don’t think they want it to completely upend the bundle, but they were pretty late to the game in saying that ‘we need to do something.'”
Many have pointed to the “Roku City” homepage on Roku streaming devices as one of the major drivers of the company’s value to Fox. And Rizzo agrees, though she believes it will take buy-in from leagues like the NFL to not only see that value but also carve out elements of broadcast rights deals that take advantage of it.
Rizzo said more media and tech companies are creating platforms for live sports, and early movers could be rewarded.
“I have to imagine that besides it even just being front and center when it comes to going to the (Roku) platform, it’s another thing to go to leagues with to say, ‘We have this newer platform that gets these viewers, what can we do and put a part of our billion-dollar deals to make this more appetizing and get more viewership?'” she explained.
“Because as much as it’s on the media companies to get the viewers, it’s on the leagues to do it, too. Like, they need to lean in.”
Some examples of innovation along these lines include FIFA’s deal to air live previews of games on TikTok and YouTube for this summer’s World Cup, or Fox itself putting some World Baseball Classic games exclusively on Tubi. Many less-valuable sports properties have moved exclusively to YouTubers’ channels or even athletes’ social media feeds in recent years.
Of course, even the most innovative sports distribution model must still drive revenue to make sense for big media conglomerates like Fox. Putting programming on some combination of Fox, FS1, Tubi, Roku Channel and Fox One means reaching many more people than Fox could even a few years ago, but the looming question remains how to monetize that audience at scale.
Still, Rizzo called Fox’s sports portfolio “really powerful” as potential leverage to work with leagues to rethink the platforms and revenue streams that have long been the norm for live sports.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.