Fox Corp. on Tuesday finally announced the major details of its big SVOD play, Fox One — it’ll cost $19.99 a month (or $199.99 annually) and launch on August 21.
But don’t get too excited, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch advised during the media company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call, also conducted Tuesday. Fox One, he said, is a “modest” business venture targeting cord-cutters and cord-nevers, and featuring no original content and little additional spending, outside of some technology cost.
The SVOD will rely on “all existing Fox content,” Murdoch added, tapping a portfolio of brands including Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Weather, Fox Sports 1, FS2, Fox Deportes, B1G, Fox local stations and the Fox Broadcast Network. Fox Nation will be available as a $24.99-a-month bundled offering (or the equivalent of $19.99 per month when the annual Fox One plan is purchased at launch).
The marketing spend preceding the launch will be — you guessed it — “modest.”
In his statement announcing the launch date and pricing, Pete Distad, CEO of Fox direct-to-consumer efforts, noted that, “In bringing together the full power of the Fox content portfolio in one service, we have created a great value proposition and user experience that will appeal to the cord-cutter and cord-never fans currently not served by conventional pay TV packages.”
Perusing Fox’s fiscal Q4/full fiscal-year 2025 financials gives some indication as to why the company is less willing to rock the traditional pay TV boat than its rivals, some of which are in the process of spinning off their fast-declining cable networks. Fox is still making gobs of money with Fox News, which saw its audience increase 25% YoY from April - June.
Fox News was the second most-watched linear network in all of U.S. television during that three-month period. And largely as a result, Fox’s cable networks division saw revenue spike of 15% in fiscal Q4 to $1.53 billion.
Fox, meanwhile, once again played up the fiscal impact of free ad-supported streaming service Tubi, noting the FAST’s 17% YoY expansion in fiscal Q4 viewing time and 32% revenue growth during the period. Tubi, Murdoch said, accounted for 25% of committed ad spending during Fox’s recently conducted upfront negotiations with advertisers. For the entire fiscal year, Tubi finished with more than 100 million active monthly users and over $1.1 billion in revenue.
Fox finished the quarter with total revenue up 6% to $3.29 billion. Ad revenue accounted for $1.1 billion of that total. Net income nearly doubled YoY to $719 million.
Finally, Murdoch was also asked about the NFL, perhaps Fox’s most important programming partner, taking an ownership stake in rival ESPN.
His response? Bland and well, modest.
“We have a tremendous relationship with the NFL,” Murdoch said. “We appreciate that they’re fans of broadcasting and cable networks, and we look forward to working with them and keeping our relationship moving forward.”