Fox Corp. is planning to launch a new streaming service combining its news, sports and entertainment content before the NFL and college football seasons this fall.
Pricing for the new platform, to be called Fox One, will be “healthy,” and not a “discounted price,” Chief Executive Officer Lachlan Murdoch said on a call with analysts to discuss quarterly earnings. Fox will also seek partnerships with other distributors and streaming services to “gain as broad a possible distribution.”
The shares jumped as much as 6.9% as trading got underway in New York on Monday, lifted also by fiscal third-quarter earnings that beat expectations.
Fox already has a strong presence on cable TV with Fox News, Fox Sports and Fox Business. The streaming offering is designed to house all of its content under one roof, without cannibalizing its traditional audience.
Fox One is aimed at the “cordless community,” Murdoch said. “We do not want to lose a traditional cable subscriber.”
The new service is also partly a result of the collapse of Venu, a sports streaming joint venture with Fox, Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., that fell apart earlier this year due to legal challenges. Now some of the companies are going it alone. Disney will launch its long-planned ESPN streaming option later this year.
Fox One will feature personalized technology that adapts to viewing preferences and integrate live and video on-demand content, Fox said in a statement..
“We have built this platform from the ground up to allow consumers to enjoy and engage with our programming in new and exciting ways, leveraging cutting edge technology to enhance the user experience across the platform,” said Pete Distad, CEO of Fox One.
Fox also announced better-than-expected financial results in the first three months of the year, buoyed by broadcasting the Super Bowl. In the fiscal third quarter, Fox reported revenue jumped 27% to $4.37 billion, beating analysts estimates. Earnings per share were 75 cents, compared with $1.40 a year earlier, due to higher costs primarily for sports programming rights and production costs for the Super Bowl broadcast.
