DOJ Clears Fox's $22B Roku Buy, Spells Out Content Promises

Fox Corp.'s $22 billion acquisition of Roku closed Friday, and the Justice Department followed with its explanation for letting it through. The Antitrust Division said the combination is not likely to harm competition. The deal wrapped less than five months after it was proposed last June, well ahead of the first half of 2027 window initially projected.

The DOJ pointed to free, ad-supported streaming services as a check on the merged company. It said entry from those providers would be timely and likely enough to keep a substantial risk of competitive harm off the table. The division also reasoned that Roku needs a wide mix of content to draw viewers, so damaging Fox's rivals on the platform could cost the combined firm money and reputation. If Roku's platform got worse, the DOJ noted, consumers could jump to other connected TV platforms.

Fox made a set of promises to get the deal across the line, according to the DOJ. Roku is supposed to stay an open, neutral content partner after the merger. Fox committed to carrying non-Fox content on Roku for at least three years, not to discriminate against it in search results, and to let users rearrange apps on the home screen.

The commitments go beyond the home screen. Fox will keep supplying data products to third parties on commercially reasonable terms consistent with Roku's standard distribution agreement, the DOJ said. It also will maintain existing contractual firewalls for competitively sensitive non-Fox content data for at least three years. That covers aggregated and non-aggregated data inferred from or collected through commercial activities of non-Fox content providers or their use of Roku products, including click, search, view and voice data.