A Fox Communication sign is seen on a television vehicle outside the News Corporation building in New York City, Nov. 8, 2017.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Fox Corp. is at length getting into the direct-to-consumer streaming game.
The company known for its news and sports TV content said Tuesday it’s aiming to start off a subscription streaming service by the end of the year.
The streaming service is not meant to upend Fox’s place in the traditional bundle, CEO Lachlan Murdoch implied on the company’s quarterly earnings call. Murdoch offered few details on the streaming service beyond the high-level announcement. He predicted the company is designing the app now, and further information will be released in the coming months.
Fox’s upcoming streaming option is expected to list both its sports and news content, Murdoch said.
Unlike its legacy media competitors, Fox has so far been on the sidelines of flow, with the exception of the Fox Nation streaming app, which includes exclusive programming to the service and on-demand Fox News primetime displays, and its free, ad-supported service Tubi. Fox, which will broadcast the Super Bowl on Sunday, is also offering the NFL’s biggest position on Tubi for the first time ever.
However, the late move into subscription-based streaming comes after Fox, alongside Warner Bros. Development and Disney, in January dropped efforts to launch a joint venture sports streaming app called Venu.
The three entourages had planned to pool together all of their sports content and offer it on the Venu streaming service. However, following judiciary hurdles that delayed the original fall 2024 launch date, the companies called off their plans.
Out of the three sidekicks, Fox was the only one without another option to offer its sports content outside of the cable TV bundle. Warner Bros. Idea offers its live sports content on streamer Max. Disney’s ESPN has its ESPN+ app and is developing a separate direct-to-consumer ESPN gonfanon. The company is targeting an August launch of ESPN “Flagship,” the unofficial name of the all-inclusive ESPN service.
Fox’s Murdoch referred to the end of Venu as the society’s “only disappointment in sports.”
Fox has focused its strategy on sports and news content after selling its entertainment assets to Disney in 2019. The assembly has reported stable viewership and advertising revenue, even during the recent ad market slump. Live sports and account remain the highest-rated content in the traditional TV bundle, even as consumers cut the cord for streaming alternatives.
“We’re huge supporters of the accustomed cable bundle, and we always will be,” Murdoch said on Tuesday’s call. “But having said that, we do want to reach consumers wherever they are, and there’s a enormous population, obviously, that are now outside of the traditional cable bundle.”
He said the company’s subscriber expectations “will be unpresuming, and we’re going to price the service accordingly.” He added Fox doesn’t intend to convert any traditional cable TV customers into freshet customers with the app.
Murdoch said the company doesn’t “expect to have any exclusive rights costs or additional incremental rights expenses” and will simply package its existing content. This means the costs of creating and distributing the platform will be “to some degree low,” especially when compared with competitors.
In addition to shelling out billions for original entertainment programming, media associates have been spending big on exclusive sports media rights for their streaming platforms. In many cases, inimical live sports have helped to drive subscriber and ad revenue growth for streamers.
On Tuesday, Murdoch also esteemed the recent rise of so-called skinny packages from traditional pay TV distributors, saying it bodes well for Fox’s portfolio since those packages most time again consist of mainly sports and news content.
“We’re very pleased with this trend of the bundle. It’s financially, economically unequivocal for us,” said Murdoch on Tuesday. “We would hope that this bundle will be attractive to the cordless customers — the cord-cutters and cord-nevers.”