Fox Corp. is finally getting into the direct-to-consumer streaming game.<\/p>\n
The company known for its news and sports TV content said Tuesday it\u2019s aiming to launch a subscription streaming service by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
The streaming service is not meant to upend Fox\u2019s place in the traditional bundle, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on the company\u2019s quarterly earnings call. Murdoch offered few details on the streaming service beyond the high-level announcement. He said the company is designing the app now, and further information will be released in the coming months.<\/p>\n
Fox\u2019s upcoming streaming option is expected to include both its sports and news content, Murdoch said.<\/p>\n
Unlike its legacy media competitors, Fox has so far been on the sidelines of streaming, with the exception of the Fox Nation streaming app, which includes exclusive programming to the service and on-demand Fox News primetime shows, and its free, ad-supported service Tubi. Fox, which will broadcast the Super Bowl on Sunday, is also\u00a0offering\u00a0the NFL\u2019s biggest game on Tubi for the first time ever.<\/p>\n
However, the late move into subscription-based streaming comes after Fox, alongside\u00a0Warner Bros. Discovery\u00a0and\u00a0Disney,\u00a0in January\u00a0dropped efforts\u00a0to launch a joint venture sports streaming app called Venu.<\/p>\n
The three companies had planned to pool together all of their sports content and offer it on the Venu streaming service. However, following legal hurdles that delayed the original fall 2024 launch date, the companies called off their plans.<\/p>\n
Out of the three partners, Fox was the only one without another option to offer its sports content outside of the cable TV bundle. Warner Bros. Discovery offers its live sports content on streamer Max. Disney\u2019s ESPN has its ESPN+ app and is developing a separate direct-to-consumer ESPN streamer. The company is targeting an August launch of ESPN \u201cFlagship,\u201d the unofficial name of the all-inclusive ESPN service.<\/p>\n
Fox\u2019s Murdoch referred to the end of Venu as the company\u2019s \u201conly disappointment in sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fox has focused its strategy on sports and news content after selling its entertainment assets to Disney in 2019. The company has reported stable viewership and advertising revenue, even during the recent ad market slump. Live sports and news remain the highest-rated content in the traditional TV bundle, even as consumers cut the cord for streaming alternatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re huge supporters of the traditional cable bundle, and we always will be,\u201d Murdoch said on Tuesday\u2019s call. \u201cBut having said that, we do want to reach consumers wherever they are, and there\u2019s a large population, obviously, that are now outside of the traditional cable bundle.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the company\u2019s subscriber expectations \u201cwill be modest, and we\u2019re going to price the service accordingly.\u201d He added Fox doesn\u2019t intend to convert any traditional cable TV customers into streaming customers with the app.<\/p>\n
Murdoch said the company doesn\u2019t \u201cexpect to have any exclusive rights costs or additional incremental rights costs\u201d and will simply package its existing content. This means the costs of creating and distributing the platform will be \u201crelatively low,\u201d especially when compared with competitors.<\/p>\n
In addition to shelling out billions for original entertainment programming, media companies have been\u00a0spending big\u00a0on exclusive sports media rights for their streaming platforms. In many cases, exclusive live sports have helped to drive subscriber and ad revenue growth for streamers.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Murdoch also noted the\u00a0recent rise\u00a0of so-called skinny packages from traditional pay TV distributors, saying it bodes well for Fox\u2019s portfolio since those packages most often consist of mainly sports and news content.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very pleased with this trend of the bundle. It\u2019s financially, economically positive for us,\u201d said Murdoch on Tuesday. \u201cWe would hope that this bundle will be attractive to the cordless customers \u2014 the cord-cutters and cord-nevers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Fox Corp. is finally getting into the direct-to-consumer streaming game. The company known for its news and sports TV content said Tuesday it\u2019s aiming to launch a subscription streaming service by the end of the year. The streaming service is not meant to upend Fox\u2019s place in the traditional bundle, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}