Tubi Passes 110M MAU and $1B in Annual Revenue… 96% of Viewing Is VOD

Fox buys Roku for $22 billion… streaming hits 48.6% in Nielsen's May Gauge, Tubi and Roku combine for 5.4%

Free ad-supported streaming has moved out of the shadow of paid subscription and become a standalone revenue business. Tubi, the free streaming service owned by Fox Corporation, said on Aug. 6 that it had reached 110 million monthly active users. The milestone comes a year after the service passed 100 million, and annual revenue has now cleared $1 billion. Users grew 14 percent year over year, viewing time rose 17 percent and quarterly revenue climbed 35 percent.

Two conditions underpin the growth. Cordless households — homes that never subscribed to pay TV or have already cut the cord — have accumulated, and advertising budgets have shifted from linear channels with shrinking reach to measurable connected-TV inventory. On the earnings call, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said roughly 70 percent of Tubi's viewers are cordless, a share well above competing services.

Tubi's headline fiscal 2026 metrics: 110 million monthly active users, a 2.3% share of total U.S. TV viewing in April 2026, and a 17% year-over-year rise in engagement. (Source: Tubi)

13 billion hours in 12 months, 3.4 billion in Q4… 60% of users are Gen Z or Millennial

Tubi logged 13 billion hours of viewing over the past 12 months, including a record 3.4 billion hours in the fourth quarter. Its library consists of more than 375,000 movies and TV episodes, over 400 Tubi Originals and 25,000 creator episodes.

About 60 percent of the audience is Gen Z or Millennial, and those viewers spend more time on Tubi than on traditional broadcast or cable. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Tubi CEO Anjali Sud pointed to audience and viewing time rising in tandem as the key result — evidence, she said, that the service is retaining viewers rather than merely acquiring them.

Fox TV segment revenue $2.5B, advertising up 108%… digital net investment under $200M

Fox reported fiscal fourth-quarter television segment revenue of $2.5 billion, up 45 percent, with quarterly advertising revenue of $1.5 billion, up 108 percent. Company-wide, quarterly revenue reached $4.2 billion (up 28 percent) and adjusted EBITDA $1.2 billion (up 27 percent). For the full year, revenue of $17 billion and EBITDA of $3.9 billion were both records.

Fox does not break out Tubi revenue separately, folding it into the television segment. Net investment in the digital segment came in below $200 million for fiscal 2026, down from $300 million a year earlier, which the company attributed to improved results at Tubi and FOX One.

Streaming takes 48.6% in May, broadcast 19.2%… Tubi 2.3%, The Roku Channel 3.1%

In Nielsen's May 2026 Gauge, released July 28, streaming accounted for 48.6 percent of total U.S. TV watch-time, up 1.0 percentage point from April. Broadcast took 19.2 percent, cable 20.4 percent and other usage 11.7 percent. Total TV usage slipped only 1 percent month over month, a smaller April-to-May decline than the 2 to 4 percent seen in prior years.

By platform, YouTube posted a platform-best 13.8 percent and held the largest share among all distributors for a third straight month. Netflix returned to fourth place in the Media Distributor Gauge at 8.0 percent, Disney's streaming operations took 4.9 percent, and Prime Video hit a platform best of 4.5 percent. The Roku Channel set its own record at 3.1 percent.

Tubi held at 2.3 percent in May, sustaining the platform record it set in April and tying Paramount streaming. Peacock took 1.8 percent and Warner Bros. Discovery 1.5 percent. Combined, Tubi and The Roku Channel reach 5.4 percent — ahead of Disney's streaming portfolio at 4.9 percent and Prime Video at 4.5 percent.

Nielsen's The Gauge for May 2026: streaming 48.6%, cable 20.4%, broadcast 19.2%. Tubi holds 2.3% and The Roku Channel 3.1%. (Source: Nielsen)

Fox buys Roku for $22 billion… 44% of streaming hours run on Roku devices

Fox announced on June 15 that it would acquire Roku for $22 billion. The company that bought Tubi for $400 million in 2020 paid 55 times that sum for distribution infrastructure six years later. Fox largely sat out the streaming wars of the past decade: it launched Fox Nation in 2018 for FOX News audiences seeking conservative commentary and lifestyle programming, and only introduced Fox One, its closest equivalent to a conventional subscription service, last August.

What Roku owns is not content but a layer. Through its operating system and hardware, Roku powers streaming television in more than 100 million households and functions as the data and ad-serving infrastructure for much of the connected-TV universe. By the company's own count, 44 percent of U.S. streaming hours in the fourth quarter of 2025 ran on Roku devices; the next-closest, Amazon Fire TV, accounted for 14 percent.

Adweek's Mark Stenberg read the deal as a signal that Fox is betting the future of connected TV looks more like YouTube than like Netflix or Disney. YouTube's dominance has normalized free, lower-budget, creator-centric content, and the long-overlooked FAST ecosystem is the beneficiary of that shift.

FAST viewing up 43%… Netflix's daily viewing per subscriber down 6%

FAST viewership reached 1.8 billion hours between January and August 2025, up from 1.3 billion hours in the same period a year earlier — a 43 percent increase. The indicators on the other side point the opposite way. A MoffettNathanson report found average daily viewing per Netflix subscriber fell 6 percent in the first half of 2025, while domestic subscriber counts have plateaued. In a mature U.S. streaming market, gains in one sector come with declines in another.

Nielsen's data sets the crossover at May 2025, when streaming took 44.8 percent and passed the combined total of broadcast (20.1 percent) and cable (24.1 percent) for the first time. It reached 47.6 percent in March 2026 and 48.6 percent in May. On March figures, Tubi and The Roku Channel combined for 5.2 percent, effectively tied with Disney at 5.3 percent and trailing only Netflix (8.2 percent) and YouTube (13.2 percent).

The defining condition of FAST sits in the first letter of the acronym. With no subscription revenue, these platforms source content more cheaply and carry a heavier ad load. Stenberg argues that consumers squeezed by broader economic pressures are proving more willing to accept that trade than they once were.

Global FAST market at $14.88B… North America accounts for 71% of revenue

The Business Research Company projects the global FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) market will grow 21.2 percent from $12.28 billion in 2025 to $14.88 billion in 2026, reaching $31.82 billion by 2030. Mordor Intelligence puts the 2026 market at $14.33 billion.

In Mordor Intelligence's tally, North America accounted for 71.1 percent of global FAST revenue in 2025, while Asia-Pacific is growing fastest at a 22.1 percent CAGR. By device, smart TVs represent 53.6 percent of the market; by distribution path, TV manufacturer environments lead with 41.1 percent.

LG Channels tops 5,000 channels, Samsung TV Plus 4,300… 1 billion smart TVs by year-end

Korean manufacturers control much of that distribution gateway. LG Electronics(LG전자) has expanded LG Channels to more than 5,000 channels across 37 countries. The company says LG Channels' global monthly average viewers rose 30 percent last year while cumulative annual viewing time increased 45 percent.

Samsung TV Plus, operated by Samsung Electronics(삼성전자), has grown from roughly 3,300 channels to about 4,300 across 30 countries. Samsung and LG smart TVs account for 45 percent of global penetration, with an installed base of 800 million units projected to reach 1 billion by year-end. Market statistics are compiled by channel counts and country coverage — but the operator leading on revenue and viewing time cited a different metric.

96% of Tubi viewing is VOD… “leaned-in, not background”

Murdoch said 96 percent of Tubi viewing is on demand, which drives engagement and makes the inventory more valuable to advertisers. Tubi's own release framed the service as an on-demand experience in which viewers choose content, creators and live events, rather than the lean-back linear experience commonly associated with FAST.

Sud translated the same point into an ad-sales argument: brands do not want viewers with the TV on in the background while they scroll on a phone, but audiences “actively discovering and choosing” what to watch, when and where. Linear FAST channel advertising carries a high share of background playback and prices at lower CPMs, while on-demand sessions built on deliberate selection command rates closer to premium streaming.

Disney weighs a free tier, Netflix expands advertising… the free-paid line dissolves

Sud characterized the quarter as market validation of a strategy Tubi has run for more than a decade: the next generation of consumers wants premium content, choice and on-demand access, but will not absorb rising prices, paywalls and fragmentation.

She cited competitors' moves as evidence. Disney is weighing a free tier, and premium operators including Netflix have pushed into ad-supported business. The boundary between the free and paid camps is eroding from both directions.

20 million visited the World Cup hub… median age of 35 for the opener

More than 20 million viewers visited Tubi's 2026 FIFA World Cup FOX Hub. Its simulcast of the two opening matches was the most-streamed English-language World Cup opener on record, with a median viewer age of 35 and nearly one-third watching on mobile. The two opening-round match days ranked among the highest-traffic days in Tubi's history.

Tubi is not large enough to bid independently on NFL or NBA rights packages. Instead it rides on rights Fox already holds, or structures separate rights such as the creator-hosted F1 altcast. Sud said the World Cup strategy targeted incremental viewers — people unwilling to pay for the full tournament but drawn to a cultural moment — rather than core soccer fans. Highlights and creator content built up in the hub remain live as a permanent destination after the tournament.

The May Gauge shows the same live-sports effect at work across the market. Prime Video carried 20 live sports events in May, including 12 NBA Playoff games, six WNBA games and two NASCAR Cup Series races, which together generated 7.5 billion viewing minutes.

25,000 creator episodes… and podcasts through Red Seat Ventures

Tubi's creator business has shifted from promotional partnerships to content sourcing. Rather than using creators as channels to promote other companies' titles, the platform has them produce around categories and communities that already work on the service. The Creatorverse Incubator with TikTok, the F1 altcast tied to Apple TV, and creator originals featuring Deestroying and Jesser fall into this track.

At an event hosted by The Paley Center for Media in New York, Sud said Tubi will not enter short-form and is committed to long-form. The approach secures creator IP while keeping the format in television grammar. SIDELINED, a Gen Z-targeted drama franchise cast with TikTok-native talent, is cited internally as proof of platform-level retention.

The business extends beyond streaming. Red Seat Ventures, a Tubi division, runs podcast and creator operations as a B2B business, and Fox plans to increase investment there once the Roku acquisition closes. Sud named live sports, expanded original exclusives and moving the next generation of creators into long-form as the options ahead.

What this means for Korean operators

Korean FAST operators and content suppliers have reported performance in channel counts and reach. LG Channels' 5,000 channels and Samsung TV Plus's 4,300 measure distribution access, not revenue. Over the same period, the operator generating the most revenue led with a different number: 96 percent VOD. What carries weight at the CPM negotiating table is the share of playback the viewer actively selected and the length of those sessions.

That 41 percent of the market flows through TV manufacturer environments — with Samsung and LG(삼성·LG) holding the gate — is a favorable condition for Korean content businesses. But being carried on a manufacturer channel and building a destination viewers seek out are different achievements, and Tubi's pricing power came from the latter. Manufacturer-platform carriage and owned-session growth should be planned as separate tracks.

The May Gauge is worth reading alongside that: YouTube's 13.8 percent rose in the same month streaming overall reached 48.6 percent. What Korean operators compete against in the U.S. is not an individual FAST service but the watch-time YouTube has already claimed, and channel carriage alone does not reach into that territory.

Disney's free-tier deliberations and Netflix's ad-tier expansion mean business plans premised on a free-versus-paid dichotomy are running out of runway. Where a Korean operator runs its paid subscription OTT and its FAST channel business as separate organizations with separate P&Ls, windowing decisions about which outlet gets a title first end up settled by org structure rather than by economics.

On the supply side, catalog volume is the negotiating asset. Tubi treats its 375,000-title library as an instrument for reading audience taste. That differs from Korean distribution strategy built around new tentpoles for U.S. entry: back-catalog libraries in the fandom genres Tubi named directly — horror, romance, reality — carry more leverage.

In sports rights negotiations, the decisive terms sit outside the main feed. Unable to bid alone, Tubi structured the F1 altcast as a separate right, and its World Cup hub outlives the tournament. While Korean broadcasters and OTT services concentrate on contract term and concurrency, what needs securing is altcast production rights and post-term use of archives, clips and creator-derived content. Creator deals likewise belong in the programming line item rather than the marketing budget — though since Tubi has ruled out short-form, short-form volume and creator long-form programming should be pursued on separate tracks.

The $22 billion Fox paid for Roku was priced against an operating system and an ad server, not a content slate. The counterparty Korean operators must negotiate with in the U.S. market is shifting from programming teams to device and OS businesses — and since Samsung and LG(삼성·LG) already hold that same layer, Korean content companies have the conditions to test those terms at home first.

On timing, the Roku close is the variable. If the deal completes during 2027, Fox will hold a single portfolio spanning Tubi, The Roku Channel and FOX One, plus Roku's device footprint and Red Seat Ventures' podcast and creator assets. For Korean operators weighing U.S. FAST and AVOD distribution, the window to secure individual terms is the next 12 to 18 months, before those negotiating desks consolidate.

Sources

1. Tubi press release, “TUBI REACHES 110 MILLION MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS AS RECORD ENGAGEMENT AND GROWING FANDOMS FUEL CONTINUED MOMENTUM”, Aug. 6, 2026 — https://corporate.tubitv.com/press/tubi-reaches-110-million-monthly-active-users-as-record-engagement-and-growing-fandoms-fuel-continued-momentum/

2. The Hollywood Reporter (Alex Weprin), “Tubi Hits 110 Million Monthly Users as Fox Streamer Delivers Highest Revenue Quarter Yet” — exclusive interview with CEO Anjali Sud, Aug. 6, 2026 — https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/tubi-hits-110-million-monthly-users-fox-streamer-report-1236665132/

3. Nielsen, “Streaming Embarks on Annual Summer Ascent in Nielsen's May 2026 Gauge Reports”, July 28, 2026 — https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2026/streaming-embarks-on-annual-summer-ascent-in-nielsens-may-2026-gauge-reports/

4. Nielsen, “Sports and Dramas Drive April Viewing Patterns in Nielsen's Latest Gauge Reports”, June 25, 2026 — https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2026/sports-and-dramas-drive-april-viewing-patterns-in-nielsens-latest-gauge-reports/

5. Fox Corporation FY2026 Q4 earnings call transcript (Motley Fool), Aug. 6, 2026 — https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/08/06/fox-foxa-q4-2026-earnings-call-transcript/

6. BigGo Finance, “FOXA Q4 2026 Earnings Call” analysis (Murdoch on 70% cordless, 96% VOD), Aug. 6, 2026 — https://finance.biggo.com/news/US_FOXA_2026-08-06

7. The Business Research Company, “Free Advertisement (Ad)-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) Global Market Report 2026” — https://www.giiresearch.com/report/tbrc1963352-free-advertisement-ad-supported-streaming.html

8. Mordor Intelligence, “Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV Market Size, Share & 2031 Growth Trends Report”, Jan. 20, 2026 — https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/free-ad-supported-streaming-tv-market

9. Electronic Times(전자신문), “LG tops 5,000 free TV channels, viewing time up 45%”, July 14, 2026 — https://www.etnews.com/20260714000217

10. ZDNet Korea, “Samsung and LG expand global FAST footprint”, July 16, 2026 — https://zdnet.co.kr/view/?no=20260716143619

11. TheWrap, “YouTube Notches 13% of TV Viewing in April as Streaming Holds Steady Near 48%”, June 25, 2026 — https://www.thewrap.com/media-platforms/tv/tv-viewership-streaming-broadcast-cable-nielsen-the-gauge-april-2026/

12. Adweek (Mark Stenberg), “The FAST Platforms Are Picking Up Speed”, June 17, 2026 — https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/fast-platforms-speed-roku-fox-tubi-youtube/

13. Adweek, “Fox Shakes Up Streaming With $22 Billion Deal for Roku”, June 15, 2026 — https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/fox-shakes-up-streaming-with-22-billion-deal-for-roku/

14. WERSM, “Tubi Wants Creator-Led Shows To Bring Fandom To Streaming”, July 3, 2026 — https://wersm.com/tubi-wants-creator-led-shows-to-bring-fandom-to-streaming/

15. StreamTV Insider, “Despite creator push, Tubi CEO says AVOD's committed to long-form content”, April 1, 2026 — https://www.streamtvinsider.com/content/despite-creator-push-tubi-ceo-says-avods-committed-long-form-content

16. Tubi press release, “TUBI TURNS PASSION INTO PERFORMANCE AT IAB NEWFRONT”, March 24, 2026 — https://corporate.tubitv.com/press/tubi-turns-passion-into-performance-at-iab-newfront/

17. TheDesk.net, “Fox-owned Tubi grows to 110 million monthly active users”, Aug. 6, 2026 — https://thedesk.net/2026/08/tubi-user-count-july-2026/