Fox Corporation posts record quarterly profit as World Cup and midterm ads lift results

Fox Corporation reported the strongest advertising quarter in its history on Monday, as a Men's World Cup broadcast and early spending tied to next year's midterm elections pushed revenue up 22 percent and adjusted earnings well past Wall Street's expectations.

For the three months ended September 30, 2026 — the first quarter of Fox's 2027 fiscal year — the company posted revenue of $4.57 billion, up from $3.74 billion a year earlier, according to the earnings release Fox filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Net income rose to $957 million from $609 million. Net income attributable to Fox stockholders came to $943 million, or $2.20 a share, up from $599 million, or $1.32 a share, in the year-earlier quarter. On an adjusted basis, which strips out certain one-time items, per-share earnings were $2.54, ahead of the roughly $2 a share analysts had been forecasting. Adjusted EBITDA climbed 54 percent, to $1.64 billion.

Advertising, not subscriber fees, drove the quarter

Advertising revenue rose 47 percent, to $2.08 billion, nearly matching the $2.08 billion Fox collected in distribution fees from cable, satellite and virtual pay-TV providers — a reversal from a year earlier, when distribution revenue comfortably outpaced advertising. Content and other revenue slipped slightly, to $406 million from $411 million.

The gain was concentrated in the Television segment, which includes the Fox broadcast network, Fox Sports and the free, ad-supported streaming service Tubi. Segment revenue rose 32 percent, to $2.71 billion, and segment profit more than doubled, climbing from $399 million to $934 million. Fox's quarterly report filed with the SEC attributes most of that increase to the FIFA Men's World Cup broadcast, higher advertising rates and "continued digital growth led by the Tubi AVOD service," along with a boost from early spending ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections. Those gains were only partly offset by the timing of NFL games on the network and lower ratings in some windows.

The Cable Network Programming segment, which houses Fox News and the company's cable sports channels, grew more modestly. Revenue there rose 8 percent, to $1.80 billion, and segment profit rose 7 percent, to $859 million, as higher per-subscriber affiliate rates and sports advertising offset a decline in digital news advertising and higher sports-rights amortization costs tied to soccer programming.

"FOX has had an outstanding start to fiscal 2027 with first-quarter records for revenue and Adjusted EBITDA," Lachlan Murdoch, the company's executive chair and chief executive, said in the earnings release.

A $22 billion Roku deal clears one hurdle, faces another

The results landed as Fox presses ahead with its pending acquisition of Roku, the connected-TV platform, a deal first announced jointly by the two companies in June at an enterprise value of roughly $22 billion. Under the agreement, each Roku share would be converted into $96 in cash plus 0.9693 of a Fox Class A share, a structure Roku confirmed in its own regulatory filing at the time. Both companies' boards approved the deal unanimously, and Fox has said the combination would pair its live sports, news and Tubi programming with a platform that reaches more than 100 million households.

Shareholders of both Fox and Roku approved the transaction at separate October votes, clearing one of two major remaining conditions. The other has proven slower: the Justice Department issued what is known as a "second request" for additional information on September 8, extending the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act until 30 days after both companies substantially comply, a step reported at the time by TheWrap and confirmed in Fox's new quarterly filing. A second request is a standard tool antitrust regulators use to examine a deal more closely and does not by itself signal that regulators intend to block it, but it has pushed back the expected timeline. Fox said in its filing that it still expects the deal to close in the first half of 2027, pending that clearance.

The stakes of a failed deal are specified in the filing: Fox would owe Roku a termination fee of roughly $866 million if certain other conditions caused the deal to collapse, or about $1.2 billion if it fell apart specifically over a failure to secure antitrust approval. Fox said lenders have committed $12 billion to help fund the cash portion of the purchase price, of which $11 billion remained available as of the end of the quarter.

A World Cup bump that is already fading

Much of the tournament's financial impact on Fox had already been booked before this quarter. The company's fiscal fourth quarter, which ended June 30, captured the bulk of World Cup-related advertising and rights amortization, and executives have said the first quarter of fiscal 2027 would see a smaller, tapering benefit alongside the start of midterm-election ad spending. That pattern showed up in the numbers: advertising growth this quarter, while still unusually strong, trailed the even larger jump the company reported in its previous quarter.

Fox's stock has risen sharply over the past year as the company has posted a string of quarters that beat Wall Street's estimates, helped by Tubi's narrowing losses, steady affiliate-fee growth at its cable networks and the lift from major sports rights. The Roku deal, if it closes, would be the largest acquisition in the company's history as a standalone public company since its 2019 split from the former 21st Century Fox, giving Fox a direct foothold in the connected-TV hardware and operating-system business it has so far reached only through distribution deals with device makers.