Okay, great. Again, thanks everyone for coming. We're beginning our next session. I'm very pleased to have with me here today, Steve Tomsic, the Chief Financial Officer of Fox. Steve, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having us back, John.
Great. So we've got about 30 minutes for Q&A, and I've got the iPad here, so if anybody has any questions, you can download the app and, you know, submit them, and I'll work them into the conversation. So Steve, you know, always this time of year, we try to get a sense for what companies are thinking about for 2024. So if you look out into the new year, can you talk about the company's priorities?
Yeah. So listen, I think Fox—it sounds repetitive, and I think I said similar things at the conference last year, but Fox has been pretty resolute around a strategy that we think distinguishes our company from many of our peers. So as part of... We separated the company a little over 5 years ago, which now seems like ancient history, but the strategy remains hyper-relevant today. We are in the live sports, live news kind of business. And we think the reason why we're in that business is, A, because we think we can lead in those two categories and have demonstrated that over a long period of time now. B, it monetizes super well because the advertisers cover it and so do the distributors. And C, it's the most compelling programming that's available in the market.
So, so you'll see us in 2024, the priorities will remain largely the same, which is continuing to deliver on that promise from a programming perspective to our customers, whether they be the end audience that watches the programming or the intermediate audience, which is the advertisers and distributors. 2024 begins to become a really big year for us, particularly on the news side. Sports is relatively similar to what we've seen this year, but 2024 is a huge year from a news perspective. You got the presidential elections and the primaries that lead into that. 2024 from a sports perspective, we have a new property for us, which is the UEFA championships, which will be in the summer. And then that builds through 2024, and then into 2025, we have our next Super Bowl.
So you'll see us continuing to focus on those two categories, and as we focus on that, we'll obviously focus on the monetization of that. So we'll have our usual sort of progress with respect to affiliate renewals, and we expect to be able to achieve our objectives there. Then with the usual advertising, trying to grow the advertising book across the whole portfolio. And then, so that's the core of the business, and then we look out from that, we're very excited about the growth opportunities with our digital assets, and in particular Tubi, Fox Nation, Fox Weather. And even the USFL, which is not digital per se, but part of the growth portfolio.
So it's a lot to get done, but we feel like that the focus that's paid off for us over the last five years will continue to pay off.
So relative to peers, and as you mentioned, most of your linear programming, including sports, is still exclusive to TV, not available on a sorta D2C platform.
Mm-hmm.
So will this continue to be the case, and are you guys confident that that's the best approach to take?
So I think, the notion or the term linear programming is now almost used in the pejorative, which we don't define ourselves by being a linear programmer. When you sat down to watch the Niners against the Eagles yesterday, you didn't think, "I'm sitting down to watch a lovely piece of linear programming," right?
No.
You're thinking about.
I did that one.
You were thinking, "I'm here to watch a really, really important sports game." And it's the same with our news service, our, our general entertainment business. So we don't, we don't define ourselves by the delivery mechanism or the way it's scheduled. Linear sports and news are the opposite of entertainment in some respects, right? Because entertainment, there's no doubt that streaming has delivered a better user experience. It's on demand. You watch it when you want, you watch it how you want. Sports is the opposite. Sports and news is the opposite. The actual content expects the viewer to be on demand, right? Because it happens when it happens. People don't watch replays of the news. People don't watch replays of... Generally speaking, they, they don't watch.
So from a delivery mechanism, we still believe that the way we deliver our program, which is largely through traditional MVPDs and digital MVPDs, is the best way that we serve the end audience, because it's the most integrated. No one has all the sports, no one has all the news. And so the best way to deliver that integrated sports experience to the end consumer is through the bundles that we serve at the moment. The best way for us to monetize our content continues to be to take affiliate fees from distributors in return for some pretty incredible programming and pretty incredible programming investment, and continue to take advertising revenue for advertisers who cover those kind of audiences.
As distribution evolves, we're not going to stick our head in the sand and say, "This is the only way we'll distribute our content," but we firmly believe that the bundle and being able to watch news and sports as part of a collective offering is gonna be the predominant way people watch it. Now, whether that bundle remains MVPDs that are facilities-based, virtual MVPDs, or some other version of that, is to be seen, and we'll assess that. And if the right commercial opportunities present themselves to evolve the way we serve our clients, then absolutely, we're attentive to it. But at the moment, we think we've got the optimized way of serving the consumer and the optimized way to monetize that.
How is that approach and, you know, on these existing distribution channels, how has that been paying dividends in terms of your sort of recent renewals on the affiliate side?
You can see it on both sides. So you can see it both on the advertising side, I think we get best in-market rates for our content from a CPM perspective, and you see it with our affiliate renewals. Like, we had in 2023, 2024, fiscal 2023, fiscal 2024, we had about 35% in each year of our affiliate book coming up for renewal. Our fiscal year, we're at the start of December now, and in terms of that 35% that we had due this fiscal year, virtually all of that has been renewed. And you've seen that happen without us going up dark, without acrimonious public debates about value of content versus value of distribution.
So it speaks to the fact that we're delivering something of immense value to the distributor in the end, and the end audience, and you see that appear in terms of what I think will be sort of best-in-class affiliate rate growth, whether it be cable affiliate or retrans growth. And so we're seeing the fruits of that, and so it sort of behooves us to kind of respect the end consumer and respect the monetization that sits in between them.
So, you know, a sort of shock to the system was Charter's recent deal with Disney, and I think some programmers have been awaiting this for a while, that you know, some of those longer tail networks or sort of less watched networks were being dropped, and that seems to have kicked off that process. I mean, what implications do you think that this has for your business as it's currently positioned?
No, listen, I think. We only know as much about the renewal as what's publicly available. But listen, I think the message that renewal tells us, and I think tells the ecosystem, is what we've been trying to say for the last five years, which is there's clearly been a prioritization by the distributors for sports, and it looks like the economics have been prioritized towards sports as a way, as opposed to, o r in preference to general entertainment content, where so much of that content is linked to SVOD platforms. We think that ultimately the bundle needs to shrink in order to serve the end consumer, and we think that, losing some of those long tail networks can only be helpful to create a bundle that sort of speaks to what the consumers are looking for.
And it looks like Charter has been given the flexibility to be able to combine both what you term to be sort of classic linear programming, as well as SVOD sort of services in the one. So now it's really the ball goes back into Charter's court in terms of assembling an offer at the right price with the right blend of services, whether they be sort of the live services, which are typically delivered linearly, like ours, and we're the best of that breed, in combination with more contemporary SVOD services. And if, if Charter can deliver that package, and that is infectious across the industry, it'll be fantastic for Fox, because it, it's helpful for the subscriber universe. But it, the proof will be in the eating of the pudding, right?
It's like, how does Charter deliver that in terms of a price point to retain those subscribers? But we think ultimately it speaks to the strength of the programming that we've prioritized within that bundle, and perhaps the strength of being able to deliver something. At the moment, the consumer is in-- When you look at what the consumer is being asked to deal with from a consumer choice, it's like, take the classic bundle, but it's way overpriced because there's a bunch of stuff-
Right
That they don't want, right? Or they go into the world of D2C, which is super fragmented, super unintegrated, super unfriendly. And so if we can build something that sits in the middle, which is truly integrated at a really sharp price point, I think it's gonna be fantastic for Fox.
Yeah, it seems like the Charter model is include all the SVOD services, but then drop all the long tails or any duplicative networks.
Exactly, it's duplicative content.
Exactly.
So, I think we're very encouraged by that sign.
I mean, that should, you know, eventually, given the savings you get from bundling, you know, we think there's 3.3 SVOD services per household. Bundling those in for your service, there, there's some real savings there, even though the price might not come down. But, I do think that there's some sort of positive trend, that this sort should lead to positive trends in terms of cord-cutting in the U.S. But if it doesn't, if you see a continued transition out of the bundle towards streaming, I mean, how will the strategy at Fox sort of evolve to sort of, you know, stay in front of that?
John, if we do see that, listen. How we are—I think people somehow have tagged us with being defined by the distribution, sort of our means of distribution. We're distribution agnostic. Like, as long... Our view is we have some of the most compelling content in the country, right? With our news and sports. How that content gets to the end consumer, whether it be through the two key versions now or whether that evolves, we'll follow that to the end consumer. It's incumbent on us to be able to continue to produce that content and have something super compelling, and then it's incumbent on us to get the right commercial terms for that.
So don't think of us as just sitting on our hands saying, "If it's not this model, then we're bust." Our distribution will evolve as the customer wants our distribution to evolve, but at the moment, we think we're best serving them with the suite of distribution that's available to them today.
Right. You know, Disney's announced that they're gonna launch ESPN Direct, 25, maybe, maybe it's a little sooner. Is there room for Fox to do the same? And if so, are there, you know, where people are starting to talk about bundling, you know, both on the SVOD side and potentially on the sports side. I mean, is that something that you would expect to evolve as if the world heads in that direction?
We did a calculus on all the potential sort of distribution modes that could possibly emerge. I think with sports in this country, they're so fragmented. So for the true sports fan, ESPN's a great service, right? And I'm sure that when they launch ESPN Flagship, it'll be a fantastic product, but it's a sliver of the sports.
Right.
And if you're a true sports fan, like, if you want, if you wanna watch NFL in a given week, you've got Amazon Thursday, you've got us Sunday, you've got CBS Sunday, you've got NBC Sunday night, and you've got ESPN Monday. So, NFL is the most important sports in the country, and so if you've got that level of fragmentation, no one sports service is gonna satisfy you. And then when you look at across, if you're, if you're a sports fan across multiple sports, you haven't got a hope. And so at the moment, the best way that that sort of collective of sports comes together is in the virtual and digital MVPDs and normal MVPDs.
If you can conjure a way to bring all those sports services together, you're bringing together content from a lot of players that kind of looks like a digital MVPD, right?
Right.
It's probably gonna be at a similar price point. We're obviously following it. We, we have the rights capability, both on the sports side and the news side, to be able to deliver our services D2C. We have a pretty extensive technology build, which we have Tubi from a streaming perspective, got Nation from a streaming perspective. So we've got all the building blocks for us to go D2C, if and when that becomes appropriate. But for now, we still think that the right strategy is where we're at.
Got it. And maybe shifting to the sports rights portfolio-
Mm-hmm.
I mean, is that... And you guys have shown a lot of discipline and you know, willingness to change, you know, and pivot based on, you know, what rights are you know, are up for grabs and how expensive those rights are. Do you think you've got the right portfolio, both on a sort of linear world and as we sort of look out into the, to, what could potentially be a more sort of digitally led future?
Yeah, listen, I think we've done a lot of optimizing of the portfolio over the last five years. So the biggest gesture we made was obviously an enormous renewal of the NFL-
Right
W hich gives us surety over the most important product for a long, long period of time.
Dropping Thursday is,
We dropped Thursday, but we think that we're well-served with the package we got with Sunday. We have MLB for a long period of time. We've got college football, which has been on a tear this year for us for a long, long period of time, particularly the Big Ten. We just renewed NASCAR for another seven years. So we think the sort of the key planks of our portfolio are in place. I think where we've made, we've also dropped certain things, like we dropped WWE. You mentioned-
We dropped Thursday Night Football. We were picked up, right? So, we did the UEFA Championships, which is a pickup. We have USFL that's coming through. So we've made changes, and we've made changes both on what we think serves the end consumer. We've made changes that sort of suit our value and economics. But we think we've got a fantastic sort of foundational platform for a long, long period of time. I think we feel as though, from a portfolio spend perspective, we've got that about right. And look, listen, we'll continue to optimize as rights come and go, but right now we're probably in as good a position as we've been in in terms of just having the surety of supply of the key programming that defines Fox Sports.
So there's a couple of big ones out there. You mentioned, you know, you guys have passed on WWE. It sort of, in our minds, things, you've created some, a little bit of, you know, freed up a little bit of budget. You, you have NBA coming up. There's a few others. I mean, is... You, you don't think as, as you look out into a digital, potentially more digitally led world, that you need to bulk up in terms of your, your, your portfolio at this point, or it's about the right level of spend?
We think we're at about the right level of spend and the right spread of rights. Like, we look at everything. I think Lachlan said NBA is probably less likely for us, more close to an outright no. So no, I think we're. We took away WWE because for us, it sort of was neither fish nor fowl. It wasn't brand defining for Fox. It was a reasonable check to write, and we were in deficit on a Friday night with that programming. But it wasn't something that you... And it was also different versions of WWE were available in different parts of the ecosystem. So it wasn't unique to us.
We think we can program Friday nights in a really, really exciting kind of way once we get through WWE, and we'll have more to say around that in the coming months. But no, I think from whether it be to serve the distribution platforms we have now, or whether distribution evolves to something different to what it is today, we think our sports portfolio will serve us super well.
Got it. Maybe turning to the ad market-y ou know, we had the ad panel kick off things this morning, which was not... I wouldn't say there were that many surprises, but I wouldn't say it was terribly constructive on the overall sort of linear TV advertising, except, except for sports, frankly. But your peers have talked about soft ad trends persisting into calendar 4Q. Can you give us an update in terms of how you're viewing the, the overall linear TV ad market, as, as well as what you're seeing on the sports side?
... So I think we're different to our peers, right? Like, we play in it, it goes to the strategy, which is sports, news, super resilient, super compelling from a content perspective and really, really hard to compete. If you don't have the NFL, you don't have the NFL. If you don't have Fox News, you don't have Fox News, right? And so that's why we play in parts where we can win. And we see our portfolio mix is different to our peers. So when we look at it, it's probably fair to say that of all of linear general entertainment, linear is the most challenged, and that is a very, very small part of our overall book. And so when we look at the overall portfolio, sports remains really solid for us.
Like, college football has been remarkable for us, and it followed having the Women's World Cup, which was also fantastic for us. NFL remains strong. NFL, I would say we probably. We sold a lot of NFL in the upfront and probably got best in market CTMs in that, and we continue to preserve that price integrity maybe a little bit better than upfront in terms of scatter pricing. I think with NFL, the match-ups that Fox has had to date have been a bit more mixed, and so therefore, it's really about. It's less about market dynamics and more about audience dynamics. We have a fantastic slate of NFL programming from here through to playoffs, and so we feel pretty excited about how that looks. MLB was okay from a cash perspective, but not so great from-
Matchup standpoint.
Well, a matchup standpoint and a game count standpoint.
Right, right.
So we kind of-
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We kind of got hosed on that. But that- but that comes and goes, right?
Yeah.
Next week, next year, it might be a seven-game Dodgers, Yankees. So but, so that, that wasn't particularly good. On the news side, it's, it's a bit more nuanced, right? So news, we still are facing sort of DR pricing headwinds a bit, and it's somewhat related to the sort of linear general entertainment, which has moved towards taking DR as part of their in, as part of their ad sales. And so news suffers from that because DR is an important component of the news advertising book. This quarter will have preemptions from sort of the amazing coverage of what's going on in the Middle East at the moment. And then obviously, you've got some ratings headwinds at news.
All in the mix, national news as a category remains pretty robust, but there are a bunch of other headwinds that are sort of fighting in against that. Tubi has been strong from a viewership perspective, but we've seen a ton of inventory come through both from an AVOD perspective and digital writ large. And so we still continue to drive super engagement at Tubi, but I think you'll see that the revenue growth will be a little bit more moderate in this coming quarter. So I think when I look at the overall book, nothing's really changed over since for most of this fiscal year, actually. It's kinda like sports remains pretty solid.
News is solid, but we have our own sort of unique issues there. General entertainment, which is a small part of our book, and then Tubi continues to grow well from an engagement perspective, but we'll see how the, sort of that revenue moderation. The final piece is local, and we're obviously comping against an enormous midterm election that we had in Q2 last year, which obviously doesn't repeat itself. From a base-to-base perspective, I think we're about where we were last year. That's kind of being driven by the fact that auto has been strong. Encouragingly, retail has been strong over the last probably month or so. And then but countervailing that is where we continue to see a lot of movement in sports betting money away from our local stations and into more national, national placement.
That's, that's the book in almost its totality, Joe.
Got it. That was comprehensive. In terms of the news side, and the ratings, I mean, is this sort of just sort of normal course of business when you have a sort of a big figure leave the... And do you expect... I mean, the ratings have, we were just looking at the other day, I mean, ratings have come back a little bit, but they're still well off from where they were. I mean, and then you mentioned the preemptions because of the war. I mean, should we think of this as something that just over time will sort of solve itself or, you know, sort of are near-term trends, or is it something we're going to see in the numbers?
No, you'll see it. Obviously, you'll see it- you saw it in the numbers in Q1, you'll see it in the numbers in Q2. For a whole balancer, it's not just ratings, it's preemptions, it's DR pricing.
Right.
So it's a bunch of reasons. So you'll see it in Q1, you'll see it in Q2 as well. When we look at the underlying health of the network, like we made changes in the lineup in mid-July, on July 17th, and they've had pretty instant impact. Like, we've always been, it's not hubris, but we've made, we are incredibly confident of the brand and the attachment of the audience to the brand. And so I think you see it, what I'd call a temporary reduction in ratings, but as we sort of wind into primary season and then into election season next year, we feel pretty confident about the slate. And I think what people need to really understand with our Fox News service is it's not just the three hours of prime time.
Like, we are now pretty close to a full day part programming beast. And so you see things like The Five, which is consistently the highest-rating news show, full stop in cable news. The channel is consistently sort of rates in the top four amongst the broadcast networks, right? And so we feel pretty confident about the capacity of the brand and the network to withstand programming changes in prime time. Absolutely. And you look at the brand and Fox News, we now call it, we've been calling it Fox News Media since the spin, right? So it's not just even a linear network, it's the digital website, it's Nation, it's Weather, it's the audio service.
And so when you look at that kind of collection and portfolio of news assets, it is by far and away the most well-placed news business in the country.
And any early read on the sort of political spending as we head into the sort of political cycle? I mean, obviously, that's mostly on the local side, but, you know, what are you thinking that we'll see as things start to heat up?
No, listen, it's too early to say. I mean, we're, we're pretty optimistic about what next year, next calendar year could look like. Typically, what happens is you start to see you won't, you won't see it in Q1 or Q2—our Q1 or our Q2, right? You, you'll start to see some build in Q3 and Q4, but that's in the, in sort of the $10s of millions, and then it really, really starts to prime July through November. And so last, last presidential cycle across the company, we wrote north of $350 million of political revenue. The vast majority of that went to our local stations.
And so listen, based on sort of the, the political atmospherics, whether they be sort of national, presidential, or whether they be local races, all points to it being another bumper political year for us.
You mentioned some moderating, but maybe we'll turn a little bit to some of the digital initiatives. You mentioned some moderation in growth on the Tubi side. Now, and you probably mentioned this, and I didn't hear, but is it more consumption-based or just the ad market or... And you know, sort of what are the drivers for that? Because obviously, our theme is there's sort of more and more options for ad-supported viewership online, aside from, you know, Tubi and YouTube and, you know, there's going to be ad-supported or ads against Amazon content. Is that having an impact on the overall economics of it?
I think short term, probably, yes. So it's from an engagement perspective, we're continuing to see phenomenal growth in engagement. So our Q1 engagement was up 65%, and our revenue growth was up 30%. I think what you're seeing with the emergence of more ad-supported video is you're seeing pressure on the ad market that Tubi is not immune from, and that expresses itself both in terms of fill rate and CPM. I would say, though, and I think that that's a short-term phenomenon because I think we've said for quite a bit of time now, it's really, really hard to drive engagement. It's hard to change that on a dime, right? And while we've got really, really healthy growth in engagement, we don't wanna do anything to interrupt that.
We wanna continue to fuel that, and monetization will catch that over time. I think with the proliferation of ad-supported services, it's potentially, in the medium term, beneficial for Tubi because we think unlike sports and news, where we think we get top CPMs in both of those categories, we're by no means getting top CPMs at Tubi. And so to the extent that these ad-supported services validate that kind of inventory, and they're able to drive CPM, drive fill rate, we think in the medium to long term, that's super healthy for Tubi. And the real hard bit is driving engagement, and so Tubi's clearly, if you look at the Nielsen Gauge, Tubi's clearly the most significant AVOD platform out there.
Like, when I look at the curves between our prime time, sort of linear-led advertising versus Tubi, Tubi's already sort of crossed that curve, and so it's a, it's a really important asset for us. And Lachlan said it at acquisition time, we expect Tubi to be the, the digital broadcast network, and it, and it's displaying all the signs of being.
And what's driving that growth? Yeah, I remember the 65% number. I mean, do you expect... I mean, it probably moderates just with the law of large numbers, but I mean, what content is resonating, or why do you guys think your guys are having so much? And you're right, the gauge numbers validate that versus all the other sort of-
No, it's not, it's not just there. Don't worry, us internally marking our homework, right? No, it's the beauty of it is, it's not one thing. It's the secret sauce is the obvious, right? Which is, you've got this enormous expanse of titles, there are almost 60,000 titles on the platform, and unlike others, our sort of from a programming perspective, we're not wedded to any one studio. We're agnostic to where we source the programming from. And if anything, programming suppliers are more and more willing to license to Tubi for monetization reasons that they have as they've embarked on their SVOD strategies. And then from a distribution perspective, we're available everywhere, and so we're not beholden to trying to support a hardware device strategy.
We're available on all the big platforms, and so it's ubiquity of content, ubiquity of distribution, and there are just absolutely no barriers to consumption, right? It's, it's free. If anything, what we're starting to do is to be able to collect some information from the consumer as they sign up to the service, as opposed to being completely barrierless, and that will help us with addressability, which will go to CPMs and all the rest of it. But we think it's a simple recipe, but we're kind of uniquely able to execute on that recipe.
Got it. I was gonna go with all the digital investments in general have been a bit of a drag on the EBITDA. How should we think of that going forward? I mean, I think if I can remember the guide correctly, it was sort of two years at about the same level-
Mm-hmm
Y ou know, this year. I mean, at a certain point, is that? And I think Tubi is part of it. I mean, I don't believe Tubi at this point is profitable. I mean, when do you start to sort of monetize that or sort of really see EBITDA growth out of those initiatives?
Yes, that's a drag on EBITDA, but I'd like to think it's a huge uplift in terms of value, right? Like, Tubi is the biggest component of that investment spend. And it would be crazy for us to dial that back, given the success we're having in that platform. So you should expect, I think, this year, across the whole sort of growth portfolio, and in that portfolio, you got things like Tubi, Nation, Weather, USFL, sort of, sort of a whole constellation of assets there. Tubi is the most important. You should expect some of those others will begin to get closer to breakeven. Tubi, I think, will keep at a similar level to what we saw last year. But then you're right, John, over the sort of medium term, we would expect Tubi to pay for itself. And listen, there's a clear pathway there.
We've had Tubi at EBITDA neutral in quarters gone by, but we choose to invest in growth. And I think given what we're seeing from a consumption perspective and a top-line perspective, we're going to continue to invest in growth 'cause we reassess the size of the opportunity. But obviously, over time, we want this to sort of wash its face, break even, and then really show proper EBITDA contribution, as opposed to being a deficit in the EBITDA line. But when we look at valuation, right, like, Tubi cost us... From an EBITDA perspective, last year, Tubi was -$240 million, right? I would argue that that asset is worth, like, press reports had it at $2 billion. Meanwhile, people are capitalizing the in- includes-
Sure
Capitalizing the losses into infinity.
Valuation.
There's an enormous value swing if people sort of get their head around that.
The investments in growth, is that more content, subscriber acquisition, or what are the investments there?
So all of the above, John. So a lot of it, predominantly content, and with respect to Tubi specifically, it's about how do you bring in— We've got an enormous amount of revenue share titles, which is where the predominance of consumption happens. But then we add to that with license spend, where we take on risk as opposed to it being on consignment, and then you've seen us with a relatively modest investment of originals. But then a bunch of the— So that's the predominant part of the investment, and then you see us invest into user acquisition. And it's the same with Nation, to be quite honest, a ton of content spend as well as user acquisition.
So longer term, I mean, it seems like a lot of streaming companies have a target out there for longer-term profitability, and I think the fact is, people just don't know. But, I mean, is this a business that can, you can see your way to sort of 10% or sort of 20%+ type, Netflix-type margins? Or how should we think of longer-term profitability of that type?
I think I won't give a number, but there's no reason why it can't achieve... We're not investing in it just for the sake of driving top-line revenue growth. We absolutely expect it to drive really, really strong IRRs, and the only way you drive strong IRRs is being able to drive EBITDA margin and free cash flow generation over the medium term. So we expect Tubi and all of those assets to be able to deliver on that promise over the coming years.
Okay. And I think we have time for one more question. The theme of sort of M&A in the media space has sort of reemerged in the, I would say, in the last—seems like it's gaining some momentum, but certainly in the last month. Actually, Fox almost, or it looks like it contemplated a transaction with your, you know, sister company, News Corp. You know, how should we think of how Fox is currently positioned in the landscape? Do you need more scale? Do you need more, maybe more digital assets, or sort of how should we think of how Fox would play as you potentially see more consolidation?
Yeah, the way we approach M&A is not from a defensive perspective, which is to say we narrowed down the company, and we've got a really, really focused company, and so we don't need scale for scale's sake, right? In fact, the whole Disney, the evolution of the Disney transaction was to deliver scale where scale was required, which was Disney and its ESPN strategy, and deliver focus where we could be leaders in news and sports. And so we don't see M&A necessarily from a defensive perspective. You look historically, and you look at our capital deployment and where it's, and where we've gone with that. We've done $4.9 billion in buybacks since the spin, and we've done, in round numbers, about $1.5 billion in M&A.
We want to grow the company, and so if you had have said to me, John, at a conference five years ago, whether that would be the split, I would have had it maybe the opposite, but, but we're super disciplined. I think it reflects how disciplined we are. We look at everything. Five years ago, people were saying, "You should be buying the RSNs," and we had the common sense not to do that. But we're on the lookout for how we can grow our core verticals, which is sports and news. And one of our core assets is the audience that is loyal and devoted to those brands, and how we monetize those audiences in adjacent spaces, and so sports betting is an obvious example of that.
So our M&A filter is pretty broad, but our bar is incredibly high, and so we'll only do something that we think is truly accretive from an earnings perspective as well as a value perspective.
Sounds great. Makes a lot of sense. Steve, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.