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Fox Posts a Record $4.57 Billion Quarter. The World Cup Is Over.

A soccer tournament and midterm ad money produced Fox’s biggest first quarter, and now the company has to show what the business looks like without them.

Vault Editorial
2–3 minutes

A soccer tournament and midterm ad money produced Fox’s biggest first quarter, and now the company has to show what the business looks like without them.

Fox just had the kind of quarter that comes around once every four years. Revenue climbed 22% to $4.57 billion for the period ended Sept. 30, adjusted EBITDA jumped 54% to $1.64 billion, and executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch called both figures first-quarter records.

Wall Street expected less. Revenue topped the $4.29 billion analyst estimate cited by TheWrap, and earnings of $2.20 a share beat a $2.02 forecast. Advertising did the heavy lifting, rising 47% to $2.08 billion. Inside the Television segment, ad sales surged 60% and segment EBITDA more than doubled, from $399 million to $934 million.

The driver was no mystery. Fox’s World Cup coverage averaged 7.74 million viewers, up 116% from the 2022 tournament in Qatar, according to Front Office Sports, and the English-language final averaged 42.5 million. Midterm spending added fuel, with political ad volume passing $350 million, according to a MarketBeat recap of the earnings call. Neither windfall lasts. The final was played July 19, and the election ends Tuesday.

Which puts the spotlight on the parts of Fox that have to earn their keep every quarter. Tubi’s revenue rose 35%, per that same recap. Distribution revenue grew 9% to $2.08 billion, a sturdy number for a cable-rooted company. Murdoch said Fox One “has hit it out of the park,” adding that something like 97% of its new subscribers have no cable package, while warning the base will be somewhat seasonal.

The bigger bet is still pending. Fox’s proposed $22 billion acquisition of Roku won shareholder approval in mid-October and awaits regulators, with the MarketBeat recap pointing to Justice Department antitrust clearance as the open item. Fox made no share repurchases in the quarter after buying back $250 million a year earlier, and it ended September with $4.5 billion in cash against $6.6 billion in borrowings.

Even football offers less cushion than usual. Fox has Eagles-Cowboys on Thanksgiving, a matchup that looked like a ratings gift until the teams fell to 2-6 and 3-5. Watch the Roku review first, then Murdoch’s promise to treat the 2030 and 2034 World Cup rights “in a disciplined manner.” He just saw what the tournament can do for a quarter. So did every rival bidder.

Sources

Photo: Brad Weaver / Unsplash.

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