The U.S. Department of Justice issued a second request for information Tuesday as part of its antitrust review of Fox Corp.'s planned $22 billion acquisition of Roku, extending the regulatory waiting period and complicating what both companies have characterized as a routine process. The tension is real: the deal's strategic logic holds, but the line between routine review and genuine structural concern is precisely what the coming months will determine.
What the DOJ is watching
The case for this combination has always rested on unit economics, specifically the pairing of Roku's connected-TV operating system, embedded in millions of televisions and streaming devices, with Fox's content portfolio and its free, ad-supported streaming service Tubi. Lachlan Murdoch, Fox's chief executive, has said he expects the two businesses to operate separately while selling advertising across both platforms. That cross-selling thesis is where the product logic concentrates.
Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, a second request keeps the mandatory waiting period open until 30 days after both parties have substantially complied, though the DOJ may close the period earlier or the parties may agree to extend it. Both companies expect the transaction to close in the first half of 2027, pending HSR clearance, stockholder approvals, and other customary conditions.
The deal, signed June 14, 2026, is structured as a two-step merger: Roku would first become a wholly owned subsidiary of Fox, then merge into a Fox subsidiary. Each Roku share is set to be exchanged for $96 in cash plus 0.9693 shares of Fox Class A common stock, with the stock component priced at $64 per Roku share. Fox shareholders are expected to own approximately 73% of the combined company upon closing. Anthony Wood, Roku's founder, chairman, and chief executive, is set to retain a role at the combined entity and join the Fox board.
The counterargument regulators are weighing
The counterargument to the companies' routine-review framing comes from rivals. According to TechCrunch, competitors have raised concerns with the DOJ about how a Fox-controlled Roku could shape content discovery, advertising data access, and home-screen positioning for competing streaming services. Those are product-layer concerns, not peripheral ones. Roku's operating system sits between viewers and every application on the platform; control over that layer, combined with Fox's own content and Tubi's ad inventory, creates a gating dynamic antitrust reviewers routinely scrutinize. A separate thread, reported by Semafor, questions whether political considerations have influenced how the DOJ's antitrust division has approached certain large mergers, though the second request itself does not signal the agency intends to block this transaction.
On balance, the read-through from a second request is that scrutiny is real but the outcome remains open. The line to watch is how quickly both companies move toward substantial compliance, since that clock governs whether the first-half 2027 close target holds.