- Fox turned down multiple “unsolicited offers” of more than $2 billion for Tubi, Bloomberg reported.
- Fox bought the free, ad-supported streamer for $440 million in 2020, and user numbers and ad revenue have grown since.
- An Insider analysis conducted last year valued the streamer at around $2.8 billion.
Fox reportedly turned down offers of more than $2 billion for Tubi, the ad-supported free streaming service the media conglomerate bought in 2020.
Lachlan Murdoch, Fox CEO and son of News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch, reportedly rejected several unsolicited offers to keep the streaming service as it continues to grow, according to Bloomberg.
Fox bought the streamer for $440 million in 2020, and Tubi has reported steady increases in users and revenue in the years since. murdoch said in an earnings call Earlier this week, Tubi’s ad revenue rose 25% last quarter to more than $200 million, and total watch time was up about 41% from a year ago.
The streamer has also grown to 61 million monthly users, according to Bloomberg, from 51 million. one year ago.
An insider’s report on various ad-supported free streaming services last year valued Tubi at $2.8 billion, based on revenue, user data and independent analysis.
At first, Tubi’s library relied heavily on licensed programming, but Fox ownership provided more funding to create original content tailored to viewer demographics, the CEO, and the founder. Farhad Massoudi told Insider in December 2021.
“We’ve been collecting data for a decade on headline viewership and audience segmentation,” Massoudi told Insider at the time. “And once we figure out what the user is interested in, we can serve them hundreds of hours of similar content.”
Tubi’s library currently contains more than 48,000 movies and TV shows, as well as partnerships with hundreds of local news and sports channels, according to a Fox Summary from December 2022.
Some research on free, ad-supported TV and video-on-demand services suggests that service revenues could double to around $30 billion, according to Bloomberg.
A representative for Tubi declined to comment on the reported deals.