Fox CEO Says JV Sports Streamer Could Get 5 Million Subscribers in First Five Years; As Many as 60 Million Customers
Fox chief Lachlan Murdoch expects the JV streamer to scale slowly, but thinks it has a large total addressable market.
Fox’s streaming ambitions are not exactly on par with its competitors in the industry. The company owns just one subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) streamer in Fox Nation, which provides news and lifestyle content while its free streaming platform Tubi handles entertainment streaming for the company. Fox will also begin offering all of its sports programming on a new joint venture streaming service with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery that’s due to launch this fall, and Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch doesn’t see regulators or legal challenges as likely to hold up the new platform, according to comments he made on Monday at the 2024 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference.
- Murdoch thinks the JV streaming service will have 5 million customers by its fifth year in existence.
- The CEO believes the streamer has a total addressable market of 60 million subscribers.
- Murdoch also confirmed that Fox Nation had 2 million subscribers, but said the company did not plan to invest a huge amount of capital in it.
Disney, Fox, and WBD first announced they would be combining their sports rights on a new streaming platform in early February, and that the service was targeting a Fall 2024 launch. A Department of Justice review of the service was announced shortly after, and Fubo is now suing the three companies in order to try and stop the JV streamer from ever reaching consumers.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference on Monday, Murdoch said that he was not “overly concerned” that the streamer would be halted by either the DOJ or Fubo’s lawsuit.
“We have obviously done a lot of work on this,” he said, implying that executives from the involved companies had thoroughly considered the possibilities of involvement from regulators before going ahead with their plans.
Murdoch also spoke to the amount of customers he thought were waiting for a service like the as-yet-unnamed JV streamer to hit the market. He said that internal projections showed that the service would be carrying 5 million customers in five years’ time; that would make it one of the smallest subscription video streamers in terms of subscribers on the market. However, Murdoch and his counterparts at Disney and WBD don’t see the streamer as a subscription video platform; instead, Fox’s CEO confirmed it will operate as a virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD), otherwise known as a live TV streaming service. That would make sense, considering that the service will offer full versions of channels like ABC and TNT, instead of just the live sports appearing on those channels.
Five million customers would make the streamer the second-largest vMVPD on the market behind YouTube TV, which recently announced it had 8 million subscribers; Hulu + Live TV is currently second at 4.6M. However, since Disney is involved in the JV sports streamer, there will likely be some bundling between Hulu and the new service that onlookers have playfully taken to calling “Spulu.”
But that’s not the ceiling for the streamer according to Murdoch, who thinks its total addressable market is the 60 million households around the United States that have never signed up for cable.
“That’s a huge market,” he said. “That’s half of the television households in this country. And we know that sports is the No. 1 driver… [of] viewership and subscriptions.”
Is Fox Nation in Line for Big Growth?
If the JV streamer does scale at the rate predicted by Murdoch, it will have some new streaming revenues to play around with before long. Even if that does come to pass, however, viewers shouldn’t expect Fox Nation to get a heavy amount of extra investment. Murdoch confirmed during Monday’s conference that a big capital investment in Fox Nation was not part of the company’s plans.
The CEO also confirmed reports which surfaced last week that Fox Nation had grown to 2 million subscribers. Despite its connection to the popular Fox News cable channel, Fox Nation has purposely been kept as a niche streaming service, aiming to provide content for a smaller, but dedicated audience by blending news commentary and lifestyle shows.
The streamer recently saw a big executive shakeup, but its mission to offer programming distinct from that found on Fox News is unchanged. Fox Nation is available for $5.99 per month, but customers can save 10% per year if they switch to the $64.99 annual plan.
Fox Nation
Fox Nation is an entertainment streaming service created by Fox News and gives subscribers access to full, commercial-free episodes from well-known right-wing personalities like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well entertainment from Kevin Costner, Kelsey Grammer, Sharon Osbourne, Roseanne Barr, and Rob Schneider. Fox Nation service can be accessed as a standalone streamer or as an add-on to the live TV streaming services DIRECTV STREAM and Fubo. Start streaming today with a 60-day free trial.