Fox Corp and Roku Receive DOJ Second Request in Merger Antitrust Review

The Quick Take

• The US Department of Justice issued a Second Request to Fox Corporation and Roku in their merger review.
• A Second Request signals serious antitrust scrutiny and typically extends the regulatory review by 6-12 months.
• Both companies said they are cooperating with the DOJ investigation, but the deal timeline is now under pressure.

The US Department of Justice issued a Second Request in its antitrust review of the proposed Fox Corporation acquisition of Roku — a significant regulatory escalation that signals the merger faces substantial competition concerns. A Second Request under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act compels the parties to submit extensive additional documentation and typically adds six to twelve months to the review timeline while creating material deal break risk.

The antitrust concern at the heart of the review is the combination of Fox's content empire (Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Broadcasting) with Roku's dominant streaming device and ad-tech platform. The DOJ is likely examining whether a combined Fox-Roku entity could foreclose competing streaming services from the most widely-used smart TV operating system, and whether the advertising inventory concentration would harm consumers and competing platforms.

Watch for whether Fox and Roku offer behavioral remedies (distribution access commitments, firewall arrangements) or structural divestitures to advance the deal. A negotiated consent decree is the most likely resolution; an outright block would be a precedent-setting outcome for streaming-media antitrust. Investors should note that deal arb spreads will widen on Second Request news — track FOXA and ROKU spread movement as a real-time probability signal.

Synthesized from 1 source.