Fox Corporation's advertising revenue rose 47% to $2.08 billion in the three months to September 30, 2026, according to the quarterly report the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 2, 2026. The FIFA Men's World Cup, early spending on the US midterm elections and the Tubi streaming service carried the increase, and advertising came within $3 million of the fees pay-TV distributors pay to carry FOX channels.

In Short

FOX, the company behind FOX News, the FOX broadcast network and the free streaming service Tubi, sold far more advertising this summer than a year earlier, because it showed the soccer World Cup and political campaigns bought airtime before the November 3 vote. That matters to advertisers because election ads take up local TV slots and push prices up, and because Tubi is growing faster than the ad businesses at YouTube and Netflix. Once the election is over, that political money goes away, and FOX itself warns that subscriptions to its newer streaming service rise and fall with sports seasons.

Advertising nearly catches distribution

Total revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 reached $4.57 billion, up $833 million or 22% from $3.74 billion, according to the earnings release Fox published alongside the filing. FOX's fiscal year ends on June 30, so the quarter covers July, August and September 2026. Net income rose 57% to $957 million. Net income attributable to Fox Corporation stockholders was $943 million, or $2.20 per diluted share, against $599 million, or $1.32, a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA, a measure the company defines as revenue minus operating and administrative costs, rose 54% to $1.64 billion.

Both revenue and Adjusted EBITDA were first-quarter records, according to Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer Lachlan Murdoch. "FOX has had an outstanding start to fiscal 2027 with first-quarter records for revenue and Adjusted EBITDA underpinned by robust growth in both advertising and distribution revenue," Murdoch said in the release.

The mix is what stands out. Advertising brought in $2,081 million. Distribution - the fees that cable, satellite and telecom operators, known as MVPDs, and streaming bundles pay to carry FOX channels - brought in $2,084 million, up 9% from $1,915 million. A year earlier distribution led advertising by $503 million; this quarter the gap was $3 million. Advertising accounted for 45.5% of total revenue, against 37.8% a year earlier, by PPC Land's calculation from the reported figures. Content and other revenue slipped 1% to $406 million.

Distribution remains the steadier line. The 10-Q attributes approximately $95 million of the $169 million distribution increase to higher average rates per subscriber and approximately $75 million to a higher average number of subscribers. Advertising, by contrast, moved with three events that will not repeat on the same calendar: a World Cup hosted in North America, a midterm cycle that the company described as a record for its political take, and the opening weeks of college football and the National Football League.

Wall Street had expected less. According to Investing.com, analysts had forecast adjusted earnings of $2.06 per share on revenue of $4.32 billion; FOX reported adjusted earnings of $2.54 per share. The stock rose 7.31% in premarket trading to $60.31 from a previous close of $56.20, according to the same source.

Television: World Cup, pricing and "lower ratings"

Most of the advertising growth landed in the Television segment, which includes the FOX broadcast network, the AVOD service Tubi and 29 full-power television stations, 11 of them in duopoly markets where FOX owns two stations. Eighteen of those stations are FOX affiliates and 11 carry MyNetworkTV, according to the 10-Q.

Television advertising revenue rose $641 million, or 60%, to $1,708 million. The filing attributes the increase "primarily due to sports programming led by the broadcast of the" World Cup "and higher pricing partially offset by the timing of NFL games and lower ratings." Political advertising tied to the November 2026 midterms and "continued digital growth led by the Tubi AVOD service" added to the total. The reference to lower ratings appears only in the 10-Q; the earnings release omits it. In the transcript of the call published by Investing.com, Tomsic's figure for television advertising growth reads as 16%, while the 10-Q reports 60%.

Segment revenue climbed 32% to $2.71 billion and Segment EBITDA more than doubled, from $399 million to $934 million, an increase of $535 million or 134%. That lifted the segment's EBITDA margin to 34.4% from 19.5%, by PPC Land's calculation. Distribution revenue at Television rose 4% to $850 million, driven by higher rates at owned and operated stations, while content and other revenue fell 4% to $155 million on lower entertainment content sales. Television now produces 59% of company revenue, up from 55%.

The World Cup final was "the most watched soccer telecast in U.S. history," Murdoch said on the earnings call. FOX does not break out how much advertising the tournament generated. Comcast did: it booked about $440 million of World Cup advertising in its own quarter to June 30. The tournament ran from June 11 to July 19, so matches from July 1 through the final fell into FOX's July-September quarter.

The scale of FOX's tournament audience was already visible in third-party data. FOX gained 0.9 points to reach 7.4% of all US TV viewing in Nielsen's June 2026 Gauge, and iSpot counted more than 25 billion TV ad impressions across FOX, FS1, Telemundo and Universo, with about 70% of FOX's soccer audience having watched at least one US men's national team match by the semifinals.

Sports carried beyond the tournament. A five-game World Series between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays "averaged 12 million viewers," Murdoch said, and "Per-game revenue was robust, which is illustrative of the strength of the sports market." FOX's NFL broadcast, America's Game of the Week, averages "nearly 25 million viewers," according to Murdoch.

Political: $350 million across the cycle

How much of the quarter came from campaigns? FOX does not say. The 10-Q describes "higher political advertising revenue principally due to the November 2026 U.S. midterm elections" without a figure. On the call, Murdoch gave a cycle-to-date number instead.

"It's now over $350 million in political revenue throughout the cycle," he said, describing it as a record for a midterm cycle. That figure spans the whole election cycle, not the quarter alone, and it cannot be read against the $2.08 billion quarterly advertising total.

How the $350 million splits

Murdoch broke the figure into three parts. Local stations account for "$250 million plus." Tubi brought in about $50 million, which he said can be treated "as effectively local revenue because it is targeted." A further "$50 million plus of national political advertising revenue" sits across sports, news and entertainment programming.

The local number came with a caveat that matters to commercial advertisers. "What tends to happen in local stations, you run out of availability, so that pushes some of the base market aside during that cycle," Murdoch said. In plain terms, campaigns bought out local inventory and non-political advertisers were displaced in those weeks.

Industry figures point the same way. AdImpact projects $11.6 billion in 2026 political ad spending, more than the $11.2 billion spent in the 2024 presidential cycle. Media buyers told Digiday that prices for premium connected TV inventory climbed to $43 per thousand impressions, from $34 to $35, during the midterm crunch. FOX's $350 million would be about 3% of AdImpact's full-cycle projection, by PPC Land's calculation, though the two figures measure different periods and scopes.

Murdoch tied part of Tubi's political take to its audience. Campaigns recognised "Tubi's large, mostly cordless audience as an ideal destination to invest for this year's midterm cycle on a targeted basis," he said. Digital platforms set their own rules: Meta, for instance, stopped accepting new US political ads from October 27 through the November 3 vote.

Tubi grows faster than YouTube and Netflix ads

"Tubi grew revenue 35% year-on-year, underpinned by a 23% increase in total view time," Murdoch said. Chief Financial Officer Steve Tomsic described the growth as "mid-30%" and said Tubi was "growing its year-on-year EBITDA contribution."

Murdoch listed what drove viewing: "its tremendous library, its World Cup hub, 10 new originals, and viral content from more than 600 creators." He said momentum "continues into the second quarter," and the NFL Thanksgiving Day game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys "will also stream live on Tubi."

The growth rate stands against slower numbers elsewhere in streaming. John Hodulik of UBS put it directly on the call: "you guys seem to have bucked the trend with Tubi in terms of revenue growth, given what we have seen from YouTube and Netflix." YouTube's advertising revenue rose 9% to $11.2 billion in the third quarter of 2026, its slowest growth of the year, and Netflix cut its 2026 advertising revenue expectation to about $2.7 billion from about $3 billion.

Murdoch attributed the gains to who watches. "They're young, they're diverse, and the majority of them are cordless. They're a very hard market for advertisers to reach, which is one of the reasons why Tubi's been so successful in garnering that advertising revenue," he said.

Third-party measurement points the same way. Comscore found Tubi held 11.6% of measured streaming ad exposure time in August 2026, second only to YouTube at 44.4%. When FOX agreed to buy Roku in June, Murdoch said Tubi was on track for revenue approaching $1.5 billion in fiscal 2026. The service, which FOX bought in 2020 for about $440 million, had passed 100 million monthly active users in June 2025.

Margins are a longer-term question. Jessica Reif Ehrlich of Bank of America recalled that Murdoch had once questioned whether mid-teens growth at Tubi was sustainable. "Thank you for proving me wrong on Tubi," Murdoch replied. "I don't remember saying that, but I'm sure I did if you said I did." On profitability, he said: "we think it'll be a 20% sort of range margin business once it reaches further maturity." FOX does not report Tubi's revenue or EBITDA separately, so the current margin is not public.

Costs at Tubi are rising alongside revenue. The 10-Q attributes approximately $120 million of the $242 million increase in consolidated operating expenses "primarily" to higher digital content costs, partly offset by lower entertainment programming amortization. Tomsic tied the Television segment's expense growth in part to "higher content costs at Tubi."

FOX News: the CPM gap and viewer fatigue

The Cable Network Programming segment, home to FOX News, FOX Business and FS1, grew more slowly. Revenue rose 8% to $1.80 billion and Segment EBITDA rose 7% to $859 million. Cable advertising increased $28 million, or 8%, to $373 million, "primarily due to higher sports advertising revenue including the broadcast of the FIFA Men's World Cup, partially offset by lower digital news advertising revenue," according to the 10-Q. Cable distribution revenue rose 10% to $1.20 billion.

Pricing is where Murdoch sees room. FOX News sells its audience at lower CPMs, or prices per thousand impressions, than the broadcast networks do. "In terms of CPMs, bridging the gap between Fox News and broadcast, we still have a tremendous amount of upside and room to go," he said, adding that FOX News competes "more with broadcast networks as opposed to our cable news peers." The company has made similar arguments to buyers before; FOX and iSpot said in July that FOX Networks delivered 142 billion TV ad impressions over a year, a self-reported figure.

Ratings are the counterweight. Michael Morris of Guggenheim noted that Nielsen "has reported some ratings declines at Fox News ahead of the midterm elections." Murdoch blamed tough comparisons with last year's news cycle - "the inauguration, the Charlie Kirk tragedy, DOGE, I think the flooding" - and what he called fatigue. "What we are seeing, though, is some viewer fatigue, which we've seen before," he said. "Those viewers are not going to any other news channel. They're not switching to MSNBC, MS NOW, or to CNN. They're just fatigued and watching slightly less television overall." He compared the cycle to the 2006 midterms, held halfway through a president's second term.

Murdoch also said FOX News "finished the quarter as the most watched cable news network while maintaining audience share levels that are higher than our peers in both prime and total day."

Digital news under pressure

The decline in digital news advertising drew a separate question. David Karnovsky of J.P. Morgan asked how FOX's platforms were operating "amid a difficult web traffic environment generally." Murdoch did not give a figure. "Fox News Digital is the number one digital news site in America. From a revenue perspective, I think it is a hyper-competitive market, and we are very pleased with the results there," he said.

The question reflects a wider shift in referral traffic. The top 100 US publishers spent about $113 million on paid search in July 2026, up 41% year on year, as AI answers spread across Google results. FOX did not say whether search referrals played a part in its own decline.

FOX One and the subscriber count

Distribution growth leaned on FOX One, the direct-to-consumer service FOX launched in August 2025 at $19.99 a month. "Fox One has hit it out of the park," Murdoch said, adding that "97% do not have a cable subscription." In September, "subscriber acquisitions increased over 30% versus the start of last year's football season," according to Murdoch.

Those additions offset losses in the traditional bundle. Counting FOX One, FOX saw "positive subscriber growth for the trailing 12 months," Murdoch said. Tomsic said declines across third-party distributors are "now running at below 6%."

Murdoch was careful not to promise more. "As you move forward, the Fox One subscriber base is going to be somewhat seasonal with sports seasons coming and going," he said. Asked whether FOX One would always make up for losses in the pay-TV ecosystem, his answer was: "Probably not, as sports seasons come and go." Bundling with other services is "in its infancy," he added.

The accounting shows how FOX One moves money inside the group. FOX One sits in Corporate and Other, a non-reportable category whose revenue rose from $89 million to $246 million. Its EBITDA loss widened by $18 million to $152 million, which the 10-Q attributes to "intercompany FOX branded content and marketing costs at the FOX One streaming service, which more than offset related distribution revenue." Eliminations - the line that strips out transactions between FOX units, including direct-to-consumer streaming - grew from $63 million to $191 million. Part of the segment-level distribution growth therefore nets out at the consolidated level, where distribution still rose 9%.

FOX One was added to The Roku Channel in May 2026, weeks before the World Cup and the Roku acquisition agreement.

What the sports bill looks like

Revenue grew faster than costs, but costs grew. Consolidated operating expenses rose $242 million, or 11%, to $2.36 billion. According to the 10-Q, approximately $120 million of that came from higher sports programming rights amortization and production costs "led by the broadcast of the FIFA Men's World Cup partially offset by lower NFL costs, driven by the timing of games." The other approximately $120 million came mainly from digital content.

Amortization of programming inventory reached $1,186 million in the quarter, against $1,144 million. Licensed programming, including prepaid sports rights, rose to $1,033 million on the balance sheet from $771 million at June 30. Total firm commitments and future debt payments stood at approximately $32 billion, down from $33 billion, "primarily due to sports programming rights payments."

The World Cup will come up for sale again. Karnovsky noted that FIFA is looking to sell English- and Spanish-language rights for the 2030 cycle as a combined package. "We will be looking at the rights for 2030 and 2034 in a disciplined manner, as we would with all sports rights," Murdoch said.

Selling, general and administrative expenses rose 3% to $567 million, on higher employee costs partly offset by lower legal costs.

A quieter accounting change: FCC licenses

The 10-Q contains a change that does not appear in the earnings release. During the quarter FOX reassessed the useful lives of its Federal Communications Commission licenses, which it had classified as indefinite-lived intangible assets, and reclassified them as finite-lived. Licenses "with a gross carrying value of $2.1 billion will be amortized on a straight-line basis over 20 years" starting July 1, 2026. FOX tested the licenses for impairment immediately before the change and recorded none.

Indefinite-lived assets are tested for impairment but not amortized, so the reclassification creates a new recurring expense. At $2.1 billion over 20 years, that is roughly $105 million a year, or about $26 million a quarter, by PPC Land's calculation. Television segment depreciation and amortization rose from $30 million to $58 million, and consolidated depreciation and amortization rose 20% to $118 million, "primarily due to amortization related to the Company's" FCC licenses, according to the filing. The 10-Q does not explain why FOX reassessed the licenses' useful lives.

The charge sits below Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes depreciation and amortization, so the headline profit measure is unaffected while reported net income absorbs it.

Cash, buybacks and the balance sheet

Cash flow swung sharply. Net cash from operating activities was $616 million, against an outflow of $130 million a year earlier. With $113 million of capital expenditures, free cash flow was $503 million. Tomsic said the improvement was "in large part due to the timing of working capital related to the World Cup, where rights payments to the tournament landed in fiscal 2026, while advertising receivables continue to be collected through the first half of fiscal 2027." The 10-Q also cites "higher political advertising receipts and lower entertainment programming payments."

FOX ended the quarter with $4.54 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $6.61 billion of borrowings. Deferred revenue rose to $411 million from $272 million at June 30. The company reports approximately $6.9 billion of revenue still to be recognized under existing contracts, mainly over one to three years, covering distribution contracts, content licensing and "sports advertising contracts." Moody's rates FOX's senior debt Baa2 and Standard & Poor's rates it BBB, both with stable outlooks.

FOX bought back no stock in the quarter, compared with $250 million a year earlier. Tomsic said the company expects "full-year share repurchases to be in line with our historical range" and anticipates resuming purchases this quarter. About $3.4 billion remains on a $12 billion authorization. A semi-annual dividend of $0.29 per share, up from $0.28, was paid on September 23, 2026.

Non-operating items cut into net income. FOX recorded $142 million of net losses on equity securities, which the 10-Q says include the change in fair value of its stake in Flutter Entertainment. Its Level 1 equity investments, primarily Flutter, were valued at $335 million, against $467 million at June 30. Interest expense, net, rose 60% to $80 million because of lower interest income. The effective tax rate was 25%.

Roku: what the 10-Q adds

FOX's pending acquisition of Roku runs through the report. The companies signed the merger agreement on June 14, 2026, according to the 10-Q, and announced the deal at about $22 billion in enterprise value, days after Reuters reported that Roku was exploring a sale. Roku stockholders will receive $96.00 in cash and 0.9693 FOX Class A shares per share.

The filing adds detail on where the deal stands. FOX and Roku stockholders approved the transaction in October 2026. It still needs clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act. Murdoch said FOX had also received foreign regulatory approvals and is "continuing to work cooperatively with the DOJ in order to obtain HSR clearance and expect to close the transaction as soon as we can."

The penalties are spelled out. Either side would pay the other a termination fee of approximately $866 million in certain circumstances. FOX would pay Roku approximately $1.2 billion if the agreement ends because certain regulatory approvals are not obtained or a permanent restraint is entered under antitrust or investment screening laws.

Financing is lined up. Lenders provided $12.0 billion of bridge loan commitments in June, of which $11.0 billion was available at September 30, plus a $1.0 billion senior unsecured term loan facility that matures two years after closing and funding. Nothing had been drawn under either facility, or under FOX's $1.0 billion revolving credit facility, at quarter end. The 10-Q lists the Roku transaction first among the factors that could cause results to differ from forecasts, including "increased indebtedness" and integration risk.

Questions about the deal were off limits on the call; Chief Investor Relations Officer Gabrielle Brown asked analysts to focus on "Fox's standalone results." When Reif Ehrlich asked whether restarting buybacks said anything about the closing date, Tomsic answered: "you shouldn't draw that linkage between us restarting the buyback and our expected timing for the transaction to close. They're two separate decisions."

Roku's own advertising has grown on volume rather than price. In its second quarter, Roku's ad revenue rose 25% to $672.8 million as video ad impressions jumped 40% and average prices per impression fell 12%.

The 10-Q repeats FOX's disclosure on defamation litigation. Smartmatic's lawsuit, filed in February 2021, seeks $2.7 billion in damages. The parties argued summary judgment motions on December 2, 2025, no trial date has been set, and a trial "is not expected to commence until 2027 at the earliest." FOX says a loss is "neither probable nor reasonably estimable." A consolidated stockholder derivative suit in the Delaware Court of Chancery over the news channel's airing of election fraud allegations about the 2020 presidential election continues, with limited discovery on director independence. The liability FOX carries for its UK newspaper indemnity fell to about $10 million from $20 million.

Why this matters for marketers

The quarter shows how concentrated TV advertising demand has become around a few events. Live sports and an election cycle moved FOX's advertising revenue by $669 million in a single quarter, and the company's own explanation pairs "higher pricing" with "lower ratings" in the Television segment. For buyers, that combination means paying more per viewer during tentpole periods.

Local inventory is the clearest pressure point. Murdoch's description of political campaigns pushing "some of the base market aside" at local stations means non-political advertisers had less local inventory to buy during the campaign. After the November 3 vote, that demand falls away. FOX has not given guidance on how much of the current quarter's advertising will come from political spending already booked.

Tubi is the other signal. Ad-supported streaming at FOX grew in the mid-30s at a time when the major US TV groups are consolidating and the largest streaming ad sellers are slowing. Tubi has sold its exchange inventory through Google's DV360 since 2025 and has tested Gracenote program identifiers in its programmatic bid streams. If the Roku transaction closes, FOX would own a large free streaming service and one of the main US connected TV platforms, combining content, distribution and ad sales under one company.

The limits of the disclosure matter too. FOX does not report Tubi revenue, World Cup revenue, quarterly political revenue or FOX One subscriber numbers. The figures that matter most to buyers came from the call as round numbers, not from the unaudited financial statements.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Fox Corporation, owner of FOX News, the FOX broadcast network, FS1, 29 local television stations, Tubi and FOX One, led by Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer Lachlan Murdoch and Chief Financial Officer Steve Tomsic.

What: Advertising revenue rose 47% to $2.08 billion and total revenue rose 22% to $4.57 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, driven by the FIFA Men's World Cup, midterm political advertising and Tubi, whose revenue grew 35%. Political advertising passed $350 million across the cycle, and the 10-Q added details on FCC license amortization and the pending Roku acquisition.

When: The results cover July 1 to September 30, 2026. FOX published them, filed its Form 10-Q and held its earnings call on November 2, 2026, the day before the US midterm vote.

Where: The business is primarily in the United States, across broadcast, cable, local stations and streaming. The filing was made with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Why: The quarter shows how live sports and election cycles concentrate TV advertising demand and raise prices, how political campaigns displace commercial advertisers at local stations, and how FOX's free streaming business is growing faster than larger streaming ad sellers while the company waits for antitrust clearance to buy Roku.