Murdoch: FOX ‘Ready to Go’ With Direct-to-Consumer Streaming Options for Sports, News
The Fox corporation is one of the more fascinating cases in the media market today. The company is one of the most well-known (and controversial) legacy media firms in the industry, and though its free streaming platform Tubi is one of the most popular ad-supported direct-to-consumer (DTC) services on the market, the company doesn’t have an entertainment-specific subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service; news and lifestyle streamer Fox Nation is the only subscription service under Fox’s corporate umbrella.
One of the biggest reasons for this is that Fox sold most of its entertainment assets to Disney in 2019. Since then, the company has essentially had to build a programming library from scratch, though its news and sports segments have continued to drive viewers to the network.
During Fox’s conference call to discuss its quarterly earnings report with Wall Street analysts on Tuesday, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said that his company was ready to ramp up its DTC offerings when the time was right, but that its linear channels on multi-channel video-programming distributors (MVPDs) — also known as cable and satellite providers — and virtual MVPDs (vMVPDs) — live TV streaming services like DIRECTV STREAM — were still pulling in too much revenue to switch over now.
“What we plan to do with news and sport going forward in terms of any sort of a direct-to-consumer or
alternative kind of distribution strategy, as I think we’ve said before, we’re ready to go,” Murdoch said. “We have the technology in place. I think we have the teams and people in place to go DTC when we deem that necessary or prudent.”
The CEO did not put any kind of timeline on when users could expect Fox to ramp up its news and sports streaming offerings, but he stressed that those would be key factors in any future DTC distribution.
“We see DTC in the future, and it will come eventually as just one component of a broader distribution strategy, but it’s — certainly across any of those platforms or technologies it’s hard to see not having our sports and our news on those platforms,” Murdoch explained.
Fox already puts some right-wing news commentary and opinion shows on Fox Nation, so that service would be a natural fit if the company decides to make more news available on a DTC service. However, currently, that platform is trying to distinguish itself from its cable news sibling by including more entertainment titles, including comedy specials, documentaries, and unscripted series.
For live sports, however, a different streaming solution would likely need to be determined. Fox offers college and NFL football, college basketball, MLB baseball, international soccer (including the World Cup), and more, and there’s a wide array of live events on its cable channels Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2. The company could eventually move those to Fox Nation as well, or start a sports-dedicated streaming platform when the time is right.
There is essentially no chance that live sports end up on Tubi, however. Fox CFO Steve Tomsic stated flatly in December that the Tubi model isn't a good fit for live sports, due to the high cost of live broadcasting rights for major sports leagues, and the fact that Tubi’s revenue is all generated by advertising dollars, not subscriptions.
Fox is one of the last major broadcast networks to bring an affiliated DTC service to the market. NBCUniversal has Peacock, which carries a large variety of live sports and a growing news lineup. Paramount+ goes one step further, offering users of its Premium Tier a 24/7 livestream of their local CBS affiliate. Next-day streams of ABC’s primetime shows go to its parent company Disney’s streamer Hulu, just as next-day streams of Fox’s primetime lineup currently do and will for years to come.
There’s no knowing when Fox will decide to make more live news and sports programming available via streaming, but viewers can rest somewhat assured. Company executives have confirmed it’s ready when the time comes, though revenues from pay-TV subscribers will have to substantially crater before Fox is ready to make that move.
Tubi
Tubi is a free video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 200,000+ movies and TV episodes - more than any other streaming service. Its ad breaks are shorter and less frequent than most free services. Fox executives have called their service “TV on steroids.”