Fox Closes $22 Billion Roku Deal, Reshapes Digital Leadership

By James Calloway

Fox Corp. closed its $22 billion acquisition of Roku on Friday and immediately reshaped the leadership of its newly combined digital business. The moves put a single division over Roku, Fox One, Tubi and Red Seat Ventures, and they land with two high-profile exits attached.

Paul Cheesbrough now serves as Co-Chair and CEO of Fox Digital Platforms, the unit that houses Roku alongside the company's streaming and digital assets. Roku founder Anthony Wood takes the second Co-Chair seat in the same division.

Who runs what now?

The structure splits operating responsibility across three executives.

• Mustafa Ozgen leads Roku as CEO going forward.
• Pete Distad, Fox's direct-to-consumer chief, oversees Fox One, Tubi and Frndly TV, the low-cost vMVPD that Roku operates.
• Mike Bidgoli has been tapped as Tubi President.

That's a clean division of labor on paper: one chief for Roku, one for the streaming portfolio around it, and a new president for Tubi's day-to-day.

Who is leaving?

Two departures bookend the reorganization. Anjali Sud, who was CEO of Tubi, exited the company last week to take the top job at SiriusXM as its new CEO. Charlie Collier, Roku Media President, is also leaving his post.

Sud's exit created the opening that Bidgoli now fills. Collier's departure removes one of Roku's most senior media-side executives just as the company folds into Fox's orbit.

Why the structure matters

The $22 billion deal closed Friday, and Fox didn't wait to redraw the chart. By placing Roku, Fox One, Tubi and Red Seat Ventures under one roof — Fox Digital Platforms — the company has a single unit accountable for its entire digital and streaming footprint.

The co-chair arrangement is the notable part. Cheesbrough carries the CEO title and operational authority, but Wood, the founder who built Roku, keeps a Co-Chair role inside the new parent's structure. Founders don't always survive this kind of consolidation; Wood now helps govern it.

Ozgen's promotion to Roku CEO gives the streaming-device business a dedicated operator rather than dual reporting through Wood's old role. Distad's expanded portfolio ties Fox One, Tubi and Frndly TV together under the executive already running direct-to-consumer.

For Tubi, the Bidgoli appointment is the second leadership change in quick succession, following Sud's departure to SiriusXM last week. The service now reports up through Distad rather than through its own CEO.

The Friday close ends the deal's regulatory and financial runway. What begins now is the harder part: proving that a $22 billion combination of a broadcaster's streaming assets and a hardware-rooted platform can run as one business.