Political Ads Drive Fox Revenue to 11% Increase
Fox Corporation posted positive results for its first quarter of fiscal year 2025, beatings out Zack’s Investment Research estimates when it came to both revenue and adjusted earnings per share. This boost was largely due to higher-than-usual political advertising ahead of the 2024 election. Advertising revenues increased 11% during this time due to increased political advertisements, continued growth at Tubi and Fox Sports’ “Summer of Soccer.”
The company’s EBITDA of over $1 billion was up 21% thanks to its sustained revenue growth. This report comes a day before the historic election, an event that will likely continue to have a major impact on the news network.
Here are the top-line results:
Net income: $832 million, compared to $415 million a year ago.
Revenue: $3.56 billion, an increase of roughly 11% compared to $3.21 billion in the prior-year quarter. Analysts from Zack’s Investment Research estimated revenue of $3.37 billion.
Adjusted Earnings Per Share: $1.45 per diluted share vs. $1.12 estimated by Zacks Analysts.
During this quarter, affiliate fee revenues increased by 6% overall. This was driven by 10% growth in the TV segment as well as 3% growth in the cable network programming segment. Other revenues increased 47%, largely due to higher sports sublicensing revenues at the national sports networks.
On the viewership front, Fox News reached 145 million viewers in October alone. During the quarter, Fox delivered 4 billion hours of Fox News media content consumed across linear and digital platforms. Total audience for news grew more than 40% year-over-year and more than 60% in the 25-to-54 year old demo. Overall, Fox News Channel was the second most watched network in all of weekday television during the time period, behind only NBC, which saw a boost thanks to the Olympics.
The company also boasted Fox News was the No. 1 cable news channel among all major political parties in the demo. Lachlan Murdoch, executive chair and CEO for Fox Corporation, noted that the news channel ranked No. 1 among Republicans, Democrats and Independents as well as No. 1 in “key swing states.”
“Fiscal 2025 is off to a solid start across our portfolio with strong audience growth at Fox News, record political advertising across the company, accelerating revenue growth at Tubi and a compelling start to our fall sports calendar,” Murdoch said in the company’s earnings report. “Collectively these contributions have combined to deliver particularly strong financial results in our fiscal first quarter led by notable top line revenue and earnings growth. Our strategy and our focus are delivering for our audiences, advertising and distribution partners, and the Fox shareholders.”
During the first quarter, Murdoch noted that advertising during the 2024 election has been “different in some significant ways from four years ago.” The 202o election saw more national dollar spent on advertising as opposed to localized spends, a trend that was described at the time as “unique.” That trend has reverted to more localized spending during this election, even when it comes to Fox’s streaming option Tubi.
“We haven’t seen any evidence of a cannibalization,” Murdoch said, referring to more traditional ad spends versus ad spends on Tubi. “In fact, it’s quite the reverse. Tubi was able to capture money that, frankly, we couldn’t take entirely on the station. There’s such a tidal wave of political dollars … To have that captured by Tubi as well is really pleasing to see.”
Speaking of Tubi, the ad-supported streamer is on track to reach a billion dollars in revenue. Murdoch mentioned that the streamer benefited from “a tremendous amount of political money” in October, though Fox did not share the exact numbers. In its current state, 95% of Tubi’s library is revenue share and 65% of the viewing is revenue share. Additionally, the 5% Fox spends on direct content purchases for the platform account for 30% of the of the viewing.
“We now see a very sustainable model,” Murdoch said. “It really will increasingly be the way Americans watch free television. That’s absolutely the case.”
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