Fox Corp is officially entering the direct-to-consumer streaming market. The company, best known for its news and sports television content, announced Tuesday that it plans to launch a subscription streaming service by the end of the year.
CEO Lachlan Murdoch emphasized on the company’s quarterly earnings call that the new service is not intended to disrupt Fox’s role within the traditional cable bundle. While he provided limited details, he confirmed that Fox is currently designing the app, with additional information set to be released in the coming months.
According to Murdoch, the streaming platform will feature both sports and news content.
Unlike many of its legacy media rivals, Fox has largely remained on the sidelines of the streaming revolution, aside from its Fox Nation service—which offers exclusive programming and on-demand access to Fox News primetime shows—and its free, ad-supported platform, Tubi. Fox, which will broadcast the Super Bowl on Sunday, is also making history by streaming the NFL’s biggest game on Tubi for the first time.
However, Fox’s foray into subscription-based streaming comes after it, alongside Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney, scrapped plans to launch a joint sports streaming service called Venu.
The three companies had intended to consolidate their sports content into a single streaming platform, but legal obstacles delayed the original fall 2024 launch. Ultimately, they decided to abandon the project in January.
Of the three companies, Fox was the only one without an alternative streaming service for its sports content. Warner Bros. Discovery provides live sports on its Max platform, while Disney’s ESPN operates ESPN+ and is working on a dedicated direct-to-consumer streaming service, tentatively named ESPN “Flagship,” which is slated for an August launch.
Fox Sports (Photo: Getty Images)Murdoch referred to the dissolution of Venu as the company’s “only disappointment in sports.”
Fox has concentrated its business strategy on news and sports since selling its entertainment assets to Disney in 2019. Despite a downturn in the advertising market, the company has maintained stable viewership and ad revenue. Live sports and news continue to dominate traditional TV ratings, even as more consumers switch to streaming services.
“We’re huge supporters of the traditional cable bundle, and we always will be,” Murdoch stated during Tuesday’s call. “But having said that, we do want to reach consumers wherever they are, and there’s a large population, obviously, that are now outside of the traditional cable bundle.”
Murdoch noted that Fox has set “modest” expectations for subscriber numbers and will price the service accordingly. He also stressed that Fox does not intend to shift existing cable subscribers to the streaming platform.
Unlike its competitors, Fox does not plan to spend additional money on exclusive content rights. “We don’t expect to have any exclusive rights costs or additional incremental rights costs,” Murdoch said, explaining that the service will simply repackage existing content. This approach is expected to keep the platform’s costs “relatively low” compared to other streaming services.
While other media companies have invested billions in exclusive sports rights and original entertainment to drive subscriber and ad revenue growth, Fox’s strategy focuses on leveraging its existing content portfolio.
During Tuesday’s call, Murdoch also highlighted the growing popularity of “skinny bundles” offered by traditional pay-TV providers, noting that this trend is beneficial for Fox. These smaller TV packages typically prioritize sports and news, which align with Fox’s content offerings.
“We’re very pleased with this trend of the bundle. It’s financially, economically positive for us,” Murdoch said. “We would hope that this bundle will be attractive to the cordless customers—the cord-cutters and cord-nevers.”
