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Lachlan Murdoch said Fox is targeting a fall football season launch for its new streaming platform run by Pete Distad with modest initial subscriber projections in the “mid-single digit millions.”
He announced last month the streamer would launch by year end, saying it would be “holistic” of all the company’s content including Fox Sports and Fox News.
In comments at the Morgan Stanley media conference, the Fox CEO was again extremely careful to stress that the goal is not to cannibalize linear television and Fox will not advertise it on linear television but is meant purely to capture those who cut the cord or have never subscribed to cable.
“We brought Pete in and Pete’s focus at Venu and now at our venture is new subscribers that are outside of the bundle,” Murdoch said. Distad had been CEO of Venu Sports, the streaming joint venture of Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery. Advances under Venu, which was sued but shuttered before it went to court or launched, have been key in allowing the new service to get up to speed relatively quickly.
Murdoch also offered another tidbit on its original streaming service, Fox Nation, designed to bring longer form content to the Fox News “superfan” – it’s got 2 to 2.5 million subscribers.
He also said he expects to air more NFL games on Tubi after a blockbuster Super Bowl for the ad-supported streaming service.
“That’s a huge opportunity for us.
“This year, despite not the best game, we [Fox] achieved record ratings, 126 million viewers. Tubi generated about 24 millio viewers, and about 15.5 million concurrent views watching the stream.” Key, he said, is that each viewer – former and new – of the game had to register and “about 40% of the audience on Tubi has not used Tubi before.”
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