As the whole world practices social distancing, Fox has just recently acquired an ad-supported streaming platform known as Tubi for $440 million which will then allow them to bring about more than 20,000 shows and movies to this platform in hopes of taking advantage of the rising streaming platform users.
Who is Tubi?
Tubi is a company which currently has 25 million users watching the films and TV shows available on the platform. Fox Corporation is different from the 21st Century Fox company which Disney had acquired back in 2019 for a meer $73 billion.
Fox Corporation does not yet have its very own streaming platform which is why they opted to purchase Tubi in order to join the streaming wars against Netflix, HBO Go, and Disney+. The twist is that Fox wants to focus on bringing sports and news to their subscribers instead of original content which is what the masses are used to.
Fox released a statement about their purchase of Tubi
According to Fox CEO named Lachlan Murdoch in a press release, "Tubi will immediately expand our direct-to-consumer audience and capabilities and will provide our advertising partners with more opportunities to reach audiences at scale," which is a positive note on how Tubi would affect them.
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A following statement said that the combination of the two powers would result in good things. Fox CEO Lachlan said that "Importantly, coupled with the combined power of FOX's existing networks, Tubi provides a substantial base from which we will drive long-term growth in the direct-to-consumer arena."
Fox used their sales from the stakes they own in Roku to purchase Tubi
Cable customers are fond of streaming many forms of entertainment on Fox's website as of the present but Fox aims to provide a platform where other free, ad-supported streamers which include Xumu (Comcast), Pluto TV (which is owned by ViacomCBS), and of course Crackle (Sony).
Fox's intentions for Tubi are not to completely take over
Instead of merging, Fox wants Tubi to continue running as an independent service which means that it won't have to change its name to Fox. Fox wants to use Tubi to offer a huge amount of its older TV shows and also movies which have been gathered over the years to be free for subscribers.
According to them, the company is searching deep into expanding what types of content Tubi will be providing to their subscribers by adding national and local news as well as sports programming. Unlike Netflix, HBO Go, and Disney+, Tubi will not be joining the originals business.
Fox's Tubi is not practically competing with Netflix, HBO Go, and Disney+
The profits of ad-supported streaming have grown 38% between 2018 and today and the numbers are still expected to increase. Other companies like ViacomCBS has reported to have 22 million monthly users while Xumo has about 5.5 million active monthly users. Streaming is a business which Fox intends to penetrate without competing with Netflix, HBO Go, and Disney+.
