Fox Streaming Service Gets Launch Date, Price, Just In Time For NFL

Forbes

a day ago

Fox One, the last-to-arrive general streaming service from any of Hollywood's media companies, will launch on Aug. 21, costing $19.99 a month, CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced as part of today's strong second-quarter earnings.
The service will feature the entirety of Fox's video portfolio, including the eponymous broadcast network, and cable services Fox News Channel, Fox Business Channel, and Fox Sports One. Murdoch again cautioned that the company is not expecting big things from its streaming venture.
"It's important to remember that our subscriber expectations or aspirations for Fox One are modest," Murdoch said.
Indeed, the company has said it is carefully limiting how much additional capital it will devote to Fox One, unlike competitors who splashed out, and lost, billions of dollars on services such Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Warner Bros. Discovery's HBO Max, and Comcast's Peacock. And don't expect much streaming-only original programming, unlike most of those competitors over the past six years.
Murdoch has signaled Fox One will mostly be another outlet for existing content it offers elsewhere, while providing Fox with a future beyond cable and broadcast, another venue for ad inventory, and a font of audience data and marketing possibilities only possible with direct-to-consumer services. The company has profitably been focused on sports and news since it sold off most entertainment holdings to Disney in 2019 for $71.3 billion.
Fox One's $20 opening price is relatively steep for a debuting service, a tactic that Murdoch previously said was designed to avoid further disruption to the substantial cash being generated by its legacy broadcast and cable operations. Indeed, the company Q2 earnings included $3.29 billion in revenue, up 6% year over year. The company also reported advertising revenue, which has been weak across the industry, rose 7%.
The new service's price also compares well to Disney-owned ESPN's imminent launch of its own full-boat streaming app, called ESPN, that will cost $30 per month and include just a whole lot of sports. Disney reports earnings Wednesday morning, and is expected to disclose more about the ESPN app then.
Disney likely will also respond to widespread reports over the weekend that it has reached agreement to take over the NFL's major in-house media operations in exchange for a 10% stake in ESPN. Hearst has owned a 20-percent stake in ESPN for 35 years.
The timing for Fox One is driven by sports, specifically Fox's portfolio of NFL and Big 10 college games, which are likely to be a huge draw for subscribers in the months immediately. Fox also broadcasts Major League Baseball, including some playoff games, professional soccer and other sports.
Fox One will also include programming from Fox News and Fox Business channels, as well as what's left of Fox broadcast's original programming, which like other networks has diminished as economics have gotten more difficult.
Fox has had an unusual streaming portfolio compared to its peers, which spent lavishly for primacy in the early days of the decade's Streaming Wars, which were decisively won by Netflix.
By comparison, days into the Covid lockdown, Fox acquired Tubi, still one of the most successful of the free, ad-supported streaming platforms, and integrated reruns of some of its biggest broadcast shows, such as Fox's The Masked Singer, into linear channels.
The company also has Fox Nation, a subscription streamer featuring lifestyle and other programming substantially designed to appeal to superfans of Fox News Channel, long the biggest of the 24/7 news operations but facing cord-cutting's decimations like all its cable brethren.
Fox has never officially disclosed Fox Nation subscription numbers, but spokespersons have coyly suggested articles weren't wrong in suggesting a very modest 3 million paying customers. That's roughly 1 percent of Netflix's more than 301 million subscribers, but also not wildly different in size from Fox News' usual daily audience of loyal, if aging viewers.
Early last year, Fox was one of the three media companies with big sports portfolios (along with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery) who tried to jointly launch Venu, a streaming joint venture that was killed after an antitrust court challenge by upstart sports-focused virtual MVPD service Fubo. Kubo subsequently agreed to be acquired by Disney's Hulu unit, to provide various bundles of cable and sports networks beyond what Hulu Plus Live TV already provides.