Fox Corporation is what remained after Disney bought most of Murdoch's empire
In 2019 Disney swallowed the film studio 20th Century Fox and much of Rupert Murdoch's entertainment business. What Disney legally could not or would not take was spun off the day before as a new company, Fox Corporation, built around broadcast television, news and sport.
Disney announced its plan in December 2017, first at $52.4 billion for the studio, cable entertainment, satellite and television production arms of 21st Century Fox. When Comcast launched a rival bid in 2018, Disney raised its offer to $71.3 billion; Comcast instead won a blind auction for Britain's Sky. The leftovers, informally dubbed New Fox, included the Fox broadcast network and its stations, which Disney could not own because an FCC rule bars mergers between the top broadcast networks, as well as Fox News, national Fox Sports and the studio lot, leased back to Disney for seven years. Regulators made Disney sell Fox's regional sports channels, which ended up with a Sinclair-led group.
Fox Corporation began trading on 19 March 2019, taking 21st Century Fox's place in the S&P 500; Disney's deal closed the next day and it agreed to drop the Fox brand by 2024. Named after the film pioneer William Fox, the new firm is headquartered on the Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. Lachlan Murdoch, chosen over his brother James, became chairman and chief executive, and a family trust gives the Murdochs 36 percent of voting shares. Rupert Murdoch stepped down as chairman in November 2023.
The slimmed company has kept buying. It paid $440 million for the free streaming service Tubi in 2020, bought the celebrity site TMZ for about $50 million in 2021, and took a stake in an online gambling firm to create Fox Bet. In 2022 it launched Fox Entertainment Studios, its first fully in-house television production venture, beginning with the drama Monarch. A plan to recombine Fox with Murdoch's newspaper company News Corp was floated in 2022 and dropped in January 2023.
Recent moves lean into streaming and sport. Fox One, a service aimed at people who have cancelled or never had cable, launched on 21 August 2025. That year Fox also bought the Mexican sports platform Caliente TV and a one-third stake in Penske Entertainment, owner of the IndyCar Series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Source: Fox Corporation
