Tubi Viewing Time Increases 41%; Service Saw Highest User Engagement Month Ever in December

FOX released its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday, and it appears that Tubi is continuing to set records. Although the company did not release specific subscriber totals for the ad-supported streaming service, it did report that Tubi saw an increase of 41% in year-over-year viewing time during the second quarter of its 2023 fiscal year, marking its best quarter ever in terms of viewing time.

The company declined to provide specific numbers, but some rough math suggests that since Tubi reported 3.6 billion hours streamed in the fiscal Q2 of 2022, its total quarterly hours streamed is now somewhere near 5 billion. December 2022 was a particularly strong month for the service; FOX reports it was the best month ever for Tubi in terms of user engagement and total viewing time.

Executives were happy to tout Tubi’s success and its position as tops in the ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) world.

“Tubi, the No. 1 AVOD player [in the industry] leads our streaming strategy and with minimal investment when compared to our peers,” Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch said. “The result in Tubi is a proof that our strategy is working and we will continue investing in and growing this platform.

It may be fair to question FOX’s claim that Tubi is the No. 1 AVOD service available. When the company last reported the number of active subscribers Tubi had in May 2022, the number sat at 51 million. The Roku Channel, one of Tubi’s chief competitors, reported having 70 million active users in early January. It’s possible that Tubi was able to add 20+ million users between May and January, but a user jump like that is probably one that FOX would be eager to point out if it had happened.

The company’s news-lifetyle hybrid subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service FOX Nation also had a record month in terms of hours viewed, though once again FOX did not disclose specific numbers. The company cited docuseries like “Yellowstone 150,” hosted by Kevin Costner, as being big drivers of viewing time on the service.

The record viewing numbers for Tubi in the preceding quarter were no doubt helped by the fact that the service was the on-demand home of 2022 FIFA World Cup matches in English. Company execs noted the success of those matches on the service in December, but cautioned that Tubi's business model doesn't really support the addition of live sports in the future.

FOX executives were bullish on the future of Tubi from a content perspective. They cited deals like the recent agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery to stream WBD FAST channels on the platform as proof that there’s room for even more growth for Tubi going forward.

“All of the major studios continue to work with us,” Murdoch said. “I think we’re seeing benefit of people realizing that their libraries, they’re sort of deep libraries, we can help them monetize those libraries. And so we’re seeing — you mentioned the Warner Brothers deal. We’re seeing everyone work with us, which is why Tubi has the biggest television movie library in streaming anywhere in the world. So we’re really very, very pleased with it.”