Fox Corp. will launch its direct-to-consumer streaming service, to be called Fox One, ahead of the National Football League season later this year.
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch unveiled the name and timing of the company’s upcoming streamer during a quarterly earnings call Monday. The exact launch date and pricing will be announced in the coming months.
While Murdoch didn’t give specifics on pricing, he said during Monday’s call it would be in line with so-called wholesale pricing, meaning it would be similar to the cost of the channels for pay tv distributors. Cable TV subscribers will get access to the service at no additional cost, Murdoch said.
“Pricing will be healthy and not a discounted price,” he said.
“It would be a failure of us if we attract more connected subscribers ... we do not want to lose a traditional cable subscriber to Fox One,” said Murdoch. He added the company is doing everything “humanly possible” to avoid more subscribers fleeing the cable bundle.
Fox plans to offer the app as part of bundles with other distributors and services, Murdoch said. He added many other streamers had already approached Fox about bundling and said the company “will be moving forward with a number of those relationships.”
On Monday Fox reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $4.37 billion, up 27% from the same period last year.
Fox’s financials were lifted by the Super Bowl, which aired on the company’s broadcast network and free, ad-supported service, Tubi, during the most recent quarter. Some ads for Super Bowl 59, which attracted roughly 128 million viewers, cost $8 million apiece. Fox reported a 65% increase in advertising revenue during the quarter.
The media company, known for the cable TV channel Fox News and its sports offering on broadcast and cable, had been on the sidelines of streaming compared with its peers. While the company has the Fox Nation streaming app and Tubi, it has yet to offer all of its content in a direct-to-consumer offering.
Murdoch alerted investors in February of the company’s plans to offer the streaming service by the end of this year.
The decision came shortly after Fox, alongside Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney, abandoned efforts to launch Venu, a joint venture sports streaming app. Fox was the only one out of its partners without a subscription streaming app already in the market.
Warner Bros. Discovery offers its live sports content on streamer Max.
Disney’s ESPN has its ESPN+ app and is developing a new flagship streaming app that will reflect the content on its cable TV network. The company will unveil further details on the app this week. CNBC reported last week that ESPN plans to name the app simply ESPN.
