After shedding its studio properties and a handful of cable and regional sports networks to the Walt Disney Company last year, the newly-formed Fox Corporation has set its sights on an ad-supported streaming TV service.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Fox is exploring a possible acquisition of San Francisco-based streaming TV and movie provider Tubi TV.
The deal could be worth $500 million, according to sources who spoke with the Journal.
Nothing has been set in stone, and discussions are still ongoing, the sources told the newspaper.
Tubi TV has a cursory connection to Fox already: The company’s former chairman, Sandy Grushow, is an advisory board member for the streaming service.
Tubi TV has around 20,000 movies and TV episodes available to stream for free. The ad-supported service has licensing deals with Filmrise similar to agreements with rivals Pluto TV, Xumo TV and Vudu.
But the company also has a handful of exclusive titles thanks to additional licensing agreements with Paramount Pictures, MGM Studios, Lionsgate and Universal Pictures.
Last year, Tubi inked a deal with Comcast Corporation to make select shows from the NBCUniversal library available on the service. At the same time, Comcast added Tubi TV to its Xfinity X1 platform, giving the service access to Comcast’s 25 million paying TV and broadband Internet subscribers.
Tubi TV is also available as a free service on Apple, Android, Roku and Amazon Fire TV along with Microsoft XBox and Sony PlayStation consoles.
