Fox Corporation has agreed to buy Roku for approximately $22 billion, announced on 15 June 2026. That is striking because Fox owned Roku shares back in 2019 and sold them in March 2020 at a loss of roughly $210 million. Now it wants to buy the whole company.

Here is the basic math. In 2019, Fox owned about 6 million Roku shares — roughly 5% of the company — according to Fox's 2019 Annual Report. In March 2020, when the pandemic was creating chaos in financial markets, Fox sold those shares for about $340 million. But because Fox had paid more for them originally, it recorded a loss of around $210 million on the sale, as shown in Fox's 2020 Annual Report. Now Fox wants to pay $22 billion to own the entire company — roughly 65 times the $340 million it received when it sold out.

Why Fox Wants Roku

Roku makes the software that runs on millions of television sets. When you turn on a Roku TV, that operating system (the underlying software) is what lets you pick Netflix, or Hulu, or any other app. Fox wants to own that software layer.

Why does that matter? Because owning Roku's software would give Fox control over which apps appear on the screen, which ones get promoted, and what data gets collected about what people are watching. Fox makes its own streaming service called Tubi. By owning Roku, Fox would control both what people watch and the device through which they watch it — plus, it would collect the data about who is watching what.

What Is Different About This Deal

Other big media companies — Warner Bros., Paramount, Comcast — have bought other media companies to get more shows and movies. Fox is doing something different. It is buying the technology layer that sits underneath all those services. Think of it like owning the highway instead of the stores on the highway.

The logic is simple: as streaming services pile up, watching any of them becomes less about which company makes it and more about which device you own or which app you open. If Fox owns the device software, it wins no matter what the customer decides to watch.

Why Fox Sold It in 2020

Why did Fox sell Roku shares in March 2020 at a loss? The pandemic had just hit. Stock markets were in panic mode. Many big companies were selling off non-essential pieces of their business to get cash and stay safe. Fox was doing what many others did: raising cash for security.

Now Fox is asking itself: should we have held on instead of selling? The answer, looking back, is yes. But at the time, no one knew what the future would hold.

What Could Stop This Deal

Government regulators could block it. If Fox owns both Roku's software and Fox's own streaming service, the Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission might worry that Fox has too much power over what gets shown on TV and how ads get sold. Roku has said it treats all apps fairly. That argument becomes harder to make once Roku is owned by a company that also wants to push its own service.

Also, we don't know yet how Fox will pay for this — whether with cash, stock, or borrowed money. That will affect Fox's finances.

Fox is making a bet: that in the future, the company that wins is the one that controls the technology — the device or the software — not the one that makes the most TV shows. If regulators approve the deal and if Roku's software stays powerful, that bet could work out.