One of the main winners of the streaming wars, Hollywood’s years-long content-spending free-for-all, has turned out to be a non-combatant. While companies such as Disney blew gazillions on building streaming services to compete with the likes of Netflix, others kept their powder dry. Fox, which still makes most of its money from old-fashioned “linear” television, was one. It has been rewarded with a 40% rise in its share price over the past five years, during which time Disney’s has fallen by the same proportion.
On June 15th Fox took a big step into the streaming business, with the surprise announcement that it had agreed to acquire Roku, an American firm which sells streaming hardware and software and operates a streaming channel of its own. The deal, valued at around $22bn in cash and stock, signals a shift in strategy at Fox and suggests how the next phase of the streaming wars may be fought.