Rupert dreamed it, Lachlan bought it: the strategy behind Fox's $22 billion Roku acquisition

Rupert Murdoch chased the TV Guide of the Future for years.

He spent billions trying to build an on-screen map for digital television before giving up.

Now his son Lachlan looks like he’s making it happen by buying Roku in a $22 billion deal.

On paper, Lachlan’s transaction seems like the thing his dad spent much of the ’90s and 2000s trying to put together: Once the deal closes, the Murdochs will own the interface that 100 million households use when they want to stream something.

It’s a big deal because it means Fox won’t just be a content company, but a distributor as well.

Buying Roku gives Fox real estate it can use to promote its own services, like Tubi, its free streamer, and Fox One, its paid streamer.

But it can also sell subscriptions to competitors’ services and get paid when it does.

And it can sell ads on all of the above.

One big catch: Fox is spending $22 billion to own a TV Guide.

Unlike the ’90s and 2000s, there are now lots of ways to get something you want to watch onto a screen of your choice.

But you might also use YouTube, or Apple, or Amazon, or Samsung, or Walmart’s Vizio.

You might still have a cable TV subscription, which would mean your cable TV provider is your home screen.

Maybe you never use any of those services, and just turn on Netflix and never spend time anywhere else.

The other big catch: In the internet age, owning a portal that millions of people use to access stuff they like gives you lots of power.

But it doesn’t give you all the power: The biggest content companies and app makers have their own leverage.

Apple can’t sell an iPhone that doesn’t let you use Instagram, and Roku can’t be a TV portal if it doesn’t include YouTube and Netflix, the two biggest names in streaming.

You could see how that gave YouTube and Netflix leverage when Roku went public in 2017: Back then, the company disclosed that Netflix generated about a third of its viewing but immaterial revenue, while YouTube, its most-watched ad-supported app, generated no revenue at all.

The details have changed a bit since then — I’ve asked Roku for the latest — but the lesson hasn’t: If you are big enough, you don’t pay the same tolls as everyone else.

Let’s be clear: Lachlan Murdoch is getting value for his $22 billion.

Roku is a massive player in streaming, and it makes $4.7 billion a year by selling ads and subscriptions.

Owning it gives Fox a way to diversify its revenue streams: Now Fox can make money from its own shows and services, but it can also get a piece of the business happening around other people’s shows and services.

That’s a position lots of media companies have wanted to be in for a long time.

It doesn’t always work out — ask HBO, which keeps getting combined with distribution companies (like Time Warner Cable, AOL, AT&T) and then sold to someone else when that doesn’t work.

Yes, owning a distribution platform means you can give your own stuff a boost — that’s why Roku has three different streamers of its own.

But if you turn on your Roku TV and want to stream “The White Lotus,” you don’t want to wade through a bunch of ads for Howdy or the Roku Channel before you get there.

So Roku, like every other distributor, has to balance out the stuff it wants you to see vs. the stuff you want to see.

That kind of tension, by the way, might normally be an issue for regulators to examine.

But in 2026, the odds that a Fox-friendly White House is going to stop the Murdochs from getting a deal they want are very low.

Just ask Larry and David Ellison, whose Paramount got the go-ahead to buy Warner Bros.

Discovery from Trump’s Department of Justice on Friday afternoon — and then hosted a UFC fight night on the White House lawn two days later.

All of which makes the Roku deal a big event — but not one that completely remakes streaming.

When Rupert Murdoch wanted to own the next-generation TV Guide, he imagined owning the only way to get to TV.

But there are lots of TV Guides in 2026.

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