- Fox Corporation recently announced it is buying streaming video startup Tubi for $440 million in cash. These are the details about the deal.
Fox Corporation recently announced it is buying streaming video startup Tubi for $440 million in cash. Tubi is a streaming service supported by ads, which has over 20,000 titles from 250 content partners. And users can watch movies and TV episodes on more than 25 platforms. Every month, Tubi users spend over 160 million hours per month watching content on the platform.
Fox is paying for this acquisition with money it made from the sale of its minority stake in Roku. And the deal is expected to close in the first half of the year.
Going forward, Fox will run Tubi as an independent service. But Fox may set up opportunities to expand Tubi through original content offerings.
Prior to the acquisition, Tubi raised about $26 million in funding. And the company’s last round was $20 million in Series C led by Jump Capital in May 2017.
Allen & Company acted as financial adviser to Fox and Jenner & Block and Kirkland & Ellis were legal advisers in the transaction. And Qatalyst Partners acted as sole financial adviser to Tubi and Fenwick & West as the legal adviser.
Fox is a separate operation from 21st Century Fox. Disney had acquired 21st Century Fox for $73 billion last year. Fox Corporation does not run a streaming platform of its own so this acquisition brings the company into that space.
Last year, media giant Viacom made a similar deal with the acquisition of Pluto TV. The terms of that deal were undisclosed, but rumor has it that the deal was valued at $340 million.
Key Quotes:
“Tubi will immediately expand our direct-to-consumer audience and capabilities and will provide our advertising partners with more opportunities to reach audiences at scale. Importantly, coupled with the combined power of FOX’s existing networks, Tubi provides a substantial base from which we will drive long-term growth in the direct-to-consumer arena.”
“We were an early investor in Roku and continue to admire the ongoing accomplishments of Anthony Wood and his team. We are pleased to expand our partnership with them as a result of the Tubi acquisition.”
– FOX Corporation Executive Chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch
“FOX Corporation’s relationships with advertisers and distribution partners, combined with the company’s dominance in news and sports programming, will help Tubi continue to grow and differentiate itself in the high-growth ad-supported streaming marketplace. I am proud of what the team has already accomplished here at Tubi and we couldn’t be more excited about joining such a fast-moving, entrepreneurial company. We look forward to working together with FOX to accelerate Tubi’s leadership position in the market and bring new competencies to FOX.”
-Tubi founder and CEO Farhad Massoudi
