Tubi


Tubi is an American ad-supported service owned by Fox Corporation. The service first launched in April 2014 and is based in San Francisco, California.

History

Tubi was founded by Farhad Massoudi and Thomas Ahn Hicks of AdRise in San Francisco, launching in 2014 as a free service. In June 2019, Tubi announced it had over 20 million active monthly users, and later in September, the company reported that users had streamed 132 million hours of content.
Sandy Grushow, former Fox TV chairman, is an advisory board member. Mark Amin, former vice chairman of Lionsgate, is an investor. Adrise, the company behind Tubi, has raised $4million in capital. Principal investors include Foundation Capital, Bobby Yazdani, Zod Nazem, SGH Capital and Streamlined Ventures.
Tubi became inaccessible throughout Europe as a result of the GDPR entering into force on May 25, 2018.
In 2019, CEO Farhad Massoud announced Tubi would nearly double its 2018 spend on licensed content, close to 100 million. In February 2019, Tubi signed a distribution deal with NBCUniversal, which includes 400 TV episodes and movies.
On September 25, Tubi became available on Vizio Smartcast. On October 21, Tubi launched "Tubi Kids" - a dedicated hub for the streamer's children-centric content via Roku and supported devices. It was also announced that Tubi would launch in the United Kingdom by early 2020.
In January 2020, Tubi announced an expansion to Mexico, in a partnership with TV Azteca.
In February 2020, it was reported that Fox Corporation had entered talks about acquiring Tubi. On March 17, Fox announced its acquisition of the company for $440 million. The deal was expected to close by late-June; Farhad Massoudi would remain at the company, which would continue as a separate subsidiary. The deal officially closed on April 20.

Programming

Tubi's programming includes movies and television series from content providers such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Studio 100, Shout! Factory, Nelvana, WildBrain, 9 Story Media Group, Bridgestone Multimedia, Funimation, Viz Media, and NBCUniversal. Tubi uses a real-time bidding platform for advertisers that delivers video ads across various platforms.