Fox Closes Its $22B Deal to Swallow $ROKU Months Early, Three Days Too Late to ‘Roku the Vote’

“Why would I deceive you?” - Elizabeth Holmes Lachlan Murdoch, to the DOJ

The real-life eldest Roy boy (read: Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch) just finished months ahead of schedule.

Fox officially backed up the Brinks truck on Friday and closed its $22B acquisition of Roku, aka the makers of the smart TV OS you sign into and forget to sign out of at every Airbnb you’ve ever stayed at. The plan in June was to wrap this up in the first half of 2027. Instead, Roku stonkholders are walking with $95.30 in cash and 0.9799 Fox shares per share, and the stonk is off the Nasdaq (RIP).

Friendly reminder, these two have hooked up before. Fox held about 5% of Roku until 2020, when it dumped the stake for roughly $350M to help pay for Tubi. Six years later, the asking price was $22B. Fox texting its exes, “I miss you…” at 3 am.

For that money, Fox basically bought the remote, which means 100M+ households to carpet bomb reach with ads and a little less reliance on cable. The Pizza Hut-Taco Bell-KFC of the streaming game (aka Fokubi) is now the third-largest TV business in the US by viewership, which, still, way to get on the podium at least. Oh, and it’s targeting about $400M in annual “synergies” (read: layoffs).

As for Roku’s founder, Morning Wood (read: Anthony Wood) is still six to midnight on this deal. Why? Because he gets a Fox board seat and the title of Co-Chair of the new Fox Digital Platforms division (so, Chief Consolation Prize Officer), alongside Tubi boss Paul Cheesbrough, who gets Co-Chair AND CEO. Lachlan’s selling “openness and choice.” Funny, since Wood told investors in June that the home screen’s promo section “will obviously now include Fox properties.”

Which brings us to Uncle Sam. Two months ago, the DOJ hit both companies with the “what are your intentions with my daughter?” and demanded more paperwork. On Friday, it closed the probe with no formal settlement. Fox just pinky promised to carry non-Fox content (think: Netflix and whatever Nepo Davey’s calling HBO Max this week) on Roku for “at least three years.” It also won’t discriminate against rivals in search results.

Per the DOJ, the merged company “would suffer monetary and reputational harm” if it used Roku to f*ck over rivals. Sounds legit. Yes, the same Fox that paid Dominion $787.5M to settle a defamation suit over its 2020 election coverage, with a $2.7B Smartmatic suit still on deck.

Of course, Roku users already got a preview. Days before the deal even closed, The Desk reports, some griped that their default wallpaper had flipped to a Fox One promo for Election Night coverage. To be fair, Fox could use the eyeballs. Fox News viewership fell off a cliff in October (think: -27% YoY), which Lachlan chalked up to “viewer fatigue” (read: your dad can’t get it up for Hannity anymore).

Come November 2029, that pinky promise expires, and we find out if Lachlan actually pulls out (something the Murdochs have never been particularly good at). I said it in June, and I’ll say it again: I swear to God, if they gentrify Roku City…

Until next time, friends! 

 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Netflix as mentioned in the article.