Right now, Fox is broadcasting the biggest sporting event in the world.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup will reach hundreds of millions of viewers, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue, and drive subscribers to Fox One.
In 2019, Fox sold most of its entertainment business to Disney for $71 billion, including the studio behind Avatar and X Men, FX, National Geographic, and its stake in Hulu. What remained was a company built around news and live sports. At the time, streaming was taking off and most media companies believed the future belonged to whoever owned the largest content library. Fox had effectively stepped away from the streaming race.
Seven years later, the market has moved in Fox’s direction. Disney, Warner, and Paramount spent the streaming era chasing subscribers and building content libraries, often at the expense of profitability. Meanwhile, live sport remained one of the few categories that consistently attracted large audiences, premium advertising rates, and rising rights values. As Fox CEO Eric Shanks later put it, media was splitting into two worlds: on demand content and live content. Fox chose live content, and that decision now sits at the centre of everything the company has built.
The results have been hard to ignore. Since the Disney transaction, Fox has grown Adjusted EBITDA to a record $3.62 billion, generated more than $2 billion in annual free cash flow, and remained consistently profitable.
Recently came Fox’s biggest move yet. On June 15, 2026, the company agreed to acquire Roku for $22 billion.
Viewed alongside Tubi, Fox One, Fox’s ownership stakes in sports properties, and its expansion across Latin America, the Roku deal is the latest step in a strategy that has been taking shape since 2019.
The question we answer today is how.
How did a company that sold most of its entertainment assets end up controlling one of the largest live audience engines in American media, one of the fastest growing free streaming platforms, a growing portfolio of ownership stakes in sports properties, and a $22 billion connected TV platform?
The answer starts with the NFL.