SBJ Media: Fox keeps building streaming future with Roku deal

What a great sports weekend. I got eyes on World Cup matches, the College World Series, UFC Freedom 250 and, of course, the NBA Finals.

While I have called Charlotte home for over 30 years and have adopted the Hornets more and more during that time, I’ve never kicked the Knicks fandom of my childhood (yes, there was a cardboard cutout of Patrick Ewing at my bar mitzvah).

And so Saturday night’s Game 5 win was a big deal for me, especially as I got to watch it on ABC with my dad, my brother and my two sons (there may have been tears shed by certain family members). As far as “Do you remember where you were?” sports moments, this one will be up there, for sure.

When it comes to streaming plans, Fox Corp. has long been the tortoise to the hare that was the rest of the media business. Legacy media players like Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Comcast all raced to build out OTT platforms, while Fox sat on the sideline. Its strategy ended up being praised by Wall Street, as those other companies spent billions on customer acquisition with varying results.

Fast forward to the middle of 2026, and Fox is going full force into streaming. There was a robust effort behind Tubi and then the launch of the Fox One vMVPD service. The latest development came Monday, with Fox agreeing to acquire Roku in a deal valuing the streaming company at approximately $22 billion. Wall Street was less thrilled, as Fox’s stock dropped 15.2%.

Why this works for Fox

Guggenheim analyst Michael Morris in a note wrote that the deal, which is expected to close in the middle of 2027, “aligns complementary businesses” and will allow Fox to be “well positioned to drive future growth in both subscription and advertising businesses.” Morris believes the combined company will become the third-largest player in U.S. television by share of viewing, per the Nielsen Gauge.

Naveen Sarma, S&P Global Ratings’ managing director, feels Fox has long been ahead of the curve on its digital plays. “This is really interesting,” Sarma told SBJ. “[Fox is] getting into distribution and I’ve always thought [Roku is] an under-monetized platform. … They get to combine Roku and Tubi, so they get a much larger inventory and they get more power in terms of chasing advertising dollars.”

Roku Sports could not gain traction

A longtime media industry executive told SBJ that Roku Sports was not armed well enough to make a serious run at becoming a big player in sports. The platform acquired rights to smaller series like Formula E, NBA G League and X Games, and then even got a small package of MLB games. MLB terminated the Roku agreement as part of its three-year rights agreements with NBC, Netflix and ESPN (Peacock now has the Sunday morning package that Roku had).

As the media executive put it, Roku Sports can also be credited with upending the entire MLB media rights landscape. ESPN saw the $10 million that Roku was paying annually for game rights and then made a determination to exercise an out in its own “Sunday Night Baseball” deal, which it deemed too expensive based on numbers being paid out by Roku.

Where will Roku-Fox deal most impact sports?

Don’t expect Fox to immediately start putting Big Ten football and NFL games on Roku Channel once the deal closes. However, Fox has proven it can get creative with simulcasts on Tubi, which was deployed during events like the Super Bowl or the recent Mexico and USMNT World Cup openers. Whatever big event Fox Sports may be carrying, I’d anticipate some integration with the Roku City design to try and drive even more eyeballs to those events.

Where sports may feel the more immediate effects is with the distribution power that Fox gains from Roku devices. Morris noted Roku’s connected TV platform has more than 100 million global streaming households (heck, I have three TVs in my house with Roku as the landing page).

Apps like ESPN, Paramount+, NBA League Pass or MLB Extra Innings have been paying to be on the Roku service, and Fox will now control that distribution.

With the NBA Finals over, Ice Cube is hoping the Big3 can “feed off the frenzy” from Knicks-Spurs as the 3-on-3 hoops league begins its ninth season this weekend.

“We always saw this as a complementary league, especially for fans,” Cube told SBJ. “When the [NBA] season is done and the Finals are over, fans have a hangover. They want more. And here we are with a real season. ... We don’t have 82 — we have eight games. … We look at what the NFL does. Every game counts.”

Cube said the Big3 is “very fortunate” to have CBS as a main partner (that deal is in its seventh year). “They provide us with the best in the business when it comes to production,” he said. “We get the same guys that produce the Super Bowl. So it’s pretty impressive for a league like ours to have a slot like that with CBS.”

A package of games remains out in market for Big3, and Cube noted the league has been in talks with a number of platforms. That smaller package of non-CBS games was with Vice TV last year, and it streamed on X in 2024. “We’re looking for people to take the non-CBS games, and hopefully it’ll be a network … or a platform that can help grow the game,” Cube said.

The Big3 also has a new element in midweek re-airs this season, as BET just struck a deal to show CBS Big3 games from the weekend on a Monday night. It’s the first time Big3 has midweek re-airs since Season 2.

‘Best kept secret’

Cube continues to feel that the NBA has hindered Big3’s growth and traditional media prospects, having alleged in the past that the NBA has encouraged sponsors and networks to avoid his young league. That makes social media even more important for Big3, which aims to go public via SPAC in Q4.

“Social media is how we can combat that,” he said. “We control that. We control the scenario. We were the first to let influencers actually air the games and comment and bring in their audience and expand their audience. … Between 2024 and 2025, [social media growth for the Big3 has] been up 7,000%. So we’ve been doing great.”

The relationship between Yankees play-by-play voice Michael Kay and ESPN/ABC lead NBA broadcaster Mike Breen dates back to 1979 when Kay was an outgoing sophomore at Fordham and Breen was a reserved freshman trying to find his way amid the private Jesuit university in the Bronx. The two sports broadcasters have remained close friends over the years, and Kay, who grew up a diehard Yankees fan in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood, is one of the few people on the planet who can relate to calling a world championship for his childhood team.

“We’d sit in the campus center and have lunch together,” Kay told SBJ’s Richard Deitsch over the weekend in Toronto, where he called the Yankees-Blue Jays series for the YES Network. “He was a freshman and I was a sophomore, but we were the same age. He would say all I ever want to be is the Knick announcer, and I’d say all I want to be is the Yankee announcer. I mean, these two doofuses and clowns, who ever thought that it could ever happen? Now he’s got me one better. He’s the voice of the NBA. I’m really proud of him. He really is the same guy today.”

This was Breen’s 21st consecutive NBA Finals — a record for a national NBA play-by-play voice — but it will unquestionably be his most memorable one. Breen has been a Knicks fan since he was a 7-year-old growing up in Yonkers.

“It means the world to him,” Kay said. “There is still the Walt Frazier poster that he put up in his Mom’s house. This is a guy who grew up as a dyed-in-the-wool Knicks fan. I’ve not seen him adversely affected by being famous and having money. Very much the same guy.”

Kay took his 10-year-old son Charlie to Madison Square Garden for New York’s miraculous Game 4 comeback, which he called one of the greatest sporting events he’s ever seen. “It was unbelievable,” Kay said. “Charlie sat on my lap the entire game. He’ll never forget that. I told him when we were driving home that when you’re 50 years old and dad’s not around, remember, I was with you for that game.”

This week’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills marks the first under the USGA’s new media deal with NBC Sports and Versant, and it comes with an interesting twist, writes SBJ’s Josh Carpenter. The third golf major of 2026 will once again have a minimum 25 hours of coverage across the week.

The change will come late on Thursday and Friday afternoon. It’s been a rite of passage over the years at the Open, with lesser-known players or amateur qualifiers filling the television window as the network closed out its weekday coverage in the early evening hours. Since NBC picked up the USGA’s rights again in 2020, Peacock would carry that final hour of coverage.

Instead, the NBC broadcast network will carry coverage through its conclusion on Friday (1:30-7:30pm ET). On Thursday, the final hours of play will still air on Peacock, but they’ll also air on NBC Sports Network for MVPDs like Comcast and YouTube TV that have ingestion deals (5-8pm). It means weekday tee times for big-name players will be pushed back (those haven’t been released yet) and it also will give NBC coverage in a near-primetime window (likely a viewership boost).

“We always peak at the very end of a broadcast for golf,” NBC Sports President Rick Cordella told SBJ when the deal was struck. “That time between 7-8 [pm] is a great time for golf.”

In Fox’s “hybrid” approach to World Cup hydration breaks, full-screen ads are certainly being seen more often than not, and the decision has been polarizing for fans and the media. Some of the angst comes from what “hybrid” was expected to look like after SBJ used the term last week to describe the planned approach. Those upset with Fox anticipated a mix where some hydration breaks would be just for ads while others would be solely picture-in-picture (no full-screen ads). However, Fox’s “hybrid” model has meant mainly full-screen ad pods the entire break (much to the chagrin of soccer traditionalists). A few times, there was a mix of full-screen ads and then full-screen booth commentary before play resumed, but nothing picture-in-picture. Sources noted that while this sort of “hybrid” approach by Fox will continue, a hydration break with only picture-in-picture (no full-screen ads) could still happen, but that will be based on production decisions made in real time around what’s going on down on the field.

UFC and Paramount always planned to have Sunday’s White House card streamed exclusively on Paramount+, sources told SBJ, despite some comments from organizers — especially government officials — that CBS would carry UFC Freedom 250. CBS has simulcast a pair of events since Paramount Skydance acquired UFC rights, and there are likely to be others in the near future, sources added. Freedom 250 likely would have set some TV viewership records for CBS, but alas, there will be no third-party viewership superlatives as Paramount+ isn’t Nielsen-rated.

The Knicks’ NBA championship victory is a big win for the league. The numbers were big on ABC/ESPN. Social media was exploding, merch will fly off the shelves and the parade through the Canyon of Heroes on Thursday will be epic. But for Disney Ad Sales, the Knicks once again didn’t dole out any favors with a gentleman’s sweep of the Spurs.

Five Finals games essentially means a break-even proposition for the company, which was likely already dealing with make goods following a Knicks’ sweep in the Eastern Conference Finals. Heading into Game 5, ABC/ESPN was averaging 19.6 million viewers, which was the best NBA Finals audience since the Michael Jordan-led Bulls’ win in 1998. The Knicks’ incredible Game 4 victory delivered 20.9 million viewers, and Game 5 (with numbers coming Tuesday) will likely exceed that, even with a Saturday night window.

Basketball was also big for Spotify last week, as NBA Finals-related unique podcast listenership jumped over 350% since the Finals began, per data from the platform. NBA Finals-related streams were up over 450% as well.

“Pardon My Take” led the way in terms of top basketball episodes last week, followed by a number of episodes from “The Bill Simmons Show” (“The Zach Lowe Show” also snuck in an episode in the top 10). After the Knicks came back from a 29-point deficit to win Game 4 on Wednesday, the top-streamed song among Spotify users in N.Y. was “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, which saw a 1,245% increase in streams compared to the start of the Finals.

The Stanley Cup Final went six games, meaning Hurricanes-Golden Knights will be a winner for Disney Ad Sales. Viewership will also be strong, as the Cup Final averaged 5.1 million heading into Sunday night’s Game 6 for the best Cup Final mark since 2013. That came after 5.8 million watched Game 5 on ABC, marking the best Game 5 since 2018.

It’s Royal Ascot week in the U.K., and NBC has had U.S. media rights to the 201-year-old horse racing event since 2017 (with a package that goes through 2028). The Saturday morning window has provided decent viewership for NBC in recent years, averaging 776,000 viewers from 2022 through 2025. The Royal Ascot is part of a thoroughbred rights stable at NBC that includes the Kentucky Derby, Breeders’ Cup (along with the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series) and Epsom Derby. Rights to the Preakness are now out in the market.

• Serena Williams, Ryan Reynolds, Robin Roberts, Masai Ujiri and Lilly Singh will be executive producers on a four-part series covering the launch of the WNBA’s Toronto Tempo, reports SBJ’s Richard Deitsch.
• The Texas Rangers Sports Network is trying to acquire the local broadcast rights to the various NBA teams that exited Main Street Sports Group through a mostly direct-to-distributor model that somewhat mirrors Fubo’s failed attempt to do the same, reports SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• It was always going to be tough for TNT Sports to match its French Open audience numbers from 2025 given the star power last year, and without any big names in the finals this year, both the men’s and women’s sides saw sharp drops.
• On the latest SBJ Sports Media Podcast, ESPN’s Sean McDonough talks about the Hurricanes-Golden Knights matchup in the Stanley Cup Final and the state of all things NHL media.