Good morning, everyone. Robert Fishman here. Hopefully you can hear me okay. We are very excited to have Fox Corporation here, with Steve Tomsic. So, Steve, thank you for being here, and,
Robert, thanks. Appreciate having us.
All your support. So let's start big picture if we can, really high level, and talk about the Fox share price, which has been mostly range bound for some time now, and we at least continue to feel that it's undervalued. I asked the question on the earnings call, but I'm curious just bigger picture. As you think about the valuation of the Fox Corporation, how does the stock price impact any decisions or actions? Clearly, we've seen the history of the 21st Century Fox and how the Murdochs approach that.
So that's a, it's an interesting question, and you did ask it on the earnings call. So I think big picture, we have enormous conviction in the quality of our assets and their long-term potential: the sports business, the news business, emerging Tubi, and a, and a plethora of other assets, that sit around those. We also have enormous frustration in the valuation. Like, I think I could mount an I think you had us at just north of 4x. I could mount an argument that says we, we trade sub-4x. When you look at sort of asset value of things like Tubi, where it's a deficit in the P&L but has absolute asset value.
Right.
You look at the value of the tax asset, which is, like, close to $2.5 billion. You look at the value of our betting assets that are kind of on the balance sheet but not through the P&L. So when we trade at sub-4 times on an absolute basis, it's enormously frustrating. And on a relative basis, it's also frustrating 'cause our peers who, who we think we've got a superior set of assets versus our peers in a very concentrated set of assets, we think we should trade equal or better. So it, it is frustrating.
When we look at it, though, you asked about actions that the company could take, and I think the way we view it is we have because of this enormous conviction we have in those assets, we're not the sort of company that like, when we look at our book of assets, like, in Monopoly parlance, we feel like we're sitting on Mayfair and Park Lane, and we've got three hotels on each, right? And we feel as though the, the market is valuing us like we're the Electric Company and the Water Works. And so but we're not gonna, we're not gonna sort of look at what other companies have done to chase share price and chase sort of the attractions from the market.
So if you look at the past, some of our peers are guilty of this, but if you look at the broader market, debt-fueled buybacks, investing literally billions of dollars in chasing subscriber-based multiples or revenue-based multiples, which you look at where some of those companies are today, they're, they're damaged from it, right? And they're, and they're vulnerable, and they're compromised as a result of it. And so I think when investors like the investors are in this room, I think we expect these investors to expect us, when they invest $1 of their capital in us, to be responsible stewards of that capital. And so when you think you've got fantastic assets, we're gonna continue to build those assets for the long term. And so that's, that's the, that's the mantra of the management team as we go forward.
As part of all that, what I would argue also is a significant asset for the company is the balance sheet.
The free cash flow that you continue to generate. So maybe just help us think about where you expect free cash flow to be roughly on 2024. But even as we think going forward, like, the sustainability of that free cash flow, we know 2025 is set to be another probably strong year. Lots of positives that should help that, including Super Bowl political. So just maybe help frame how you think about the sustainability of your overall free cash flow.
Yeah. So I'll resist the temptation to start giving guidance given we don't put it out there. But, I think from a free cash flow perspective for the balance of the year, I think the big swings that, that are not trended in terms of event or, or specific elements in the business for the, the last quarter, we've got both the UEFA Euros back end of this quarter. We've got Copa América, back end of the quarter. And then Tubi, we've been sort of trailing sort of the amount, year to date, we're under the amount of EBITDA investment we've put into Tubi so far, and I'd expect that to amp up a little bit in Q4. But then countervailing some of that will be the fact that we don't have USFL on the books in, in Q4.
As I look forward to fiscal 2025, the big things that are gonna swing that around, like, there's trend accretion in the business. But the big things from a free cash flow perspective is the Super Bowl, where from a free cash flow it'd be very accretive for us, right? Because you've got, like, a 10% increment in the cash rights fee, and then you write a significant amount of incremental revenue around that. It won't be the case from an EBITDA perspective because in a Super Bowl year, we obviously burn off a ton of amortization through the P&L. The other big tailwind for us from a free cash flow perspective and a P&L perspective next year will be the election and the political revenue that we expect to generate.
So we're really well positioned going finishing off 2024 and going into 2025.
So maybe just putting that all together, how do you think about being more aggressive on capital returns given where the share price is and, and the strong balance sheet and cash flow position?
No, I'm gonna be a bit boring here because, like, I think we've been balanced. If I look at, we did $2 billion of buybacks last fiscal. If I look at history of company, we're now at $5.4 billion into the buybacks over, what, just a little over four years, which is close to more than a quarter of the share count as it was back then. And so I think we've done a lot in terms of buybacks, and you should expect us to continue to sort of put money into the buyback. But we want to be balanced. If I look at that $5.4 billion that we have done in buybacks and compare that against sort of acquisition growth investments, so that sort of net-net is about $1.5 billion.
So, so far in the life of Fox, we've been tilted towards returning capital to shareholders, and we'll continue to be balanced with it. But we also don't want. We like the flexibility and the strength of the balance sheet. And so we'll continue to wanna keep that flexibility, albeit that we have an enormously high bar with respect to inorganic investment.
Got it. Okay. So maybe let's jump into some of the drivers of all this cash flow. Probably at the top of that list should be affiliate fees. And, you've already made significant progress through the current renewal cycle. I'm just wondering if you can provide a little bit more color, in terms of your approach and whether the negotiation strategy has changed at all given what you saw play out publicly through Disney-Charter and, obviously, the big announcement that you guys made earlier this year with the sports JV.
So I think the industry, the distribution landscape for media is evolving, right? I think there's no doubt that it feels like from a consumer perspective—I've said this at other conferences before—it feels like we're at peak frustration, right? Because you've got choices around you can either take the big bundle, which for what you pay has a lot of content that you don't watch or you're double paying for because you've taken the streaming products that sit alongside it, right? From a Fox perspective, as part of doing the Disney transaction, we narrowed down our assets. And the narrowing down, so from a wholesale bundle that we offer to a multitude of distributors, we already offer a really narrowed down, skinny, concentrated bundle of must-have content.
And so I think the Charter outcome with Disney, I think, is net positive for Fox 'cause where I think we wanna get to is a best-of kind of distribution model, which takes the best of live sports, live news, and the best of streaming, and tries to bring that together at a price point and a user interface that's much more friendly to the consumer. And I think the way we view that is as long as we continue to invest in sports and news to make sure that our product is as good as it can be, it's always gonna find carriage 'cause we just deal in the events, whether it be sports events or news events, that people are just glued to their TV in sort of big numbers for our content.
And so we're encouraged by where the Charter Disney negotiations went. And now the next step is for Charter to sort of take sort of continue to run that model through other channel providers and be able to sort of ideally lead the industry in creating this, this sort of much more evolved bundle. But the proof will be in the putting in terms of, of when that comes. We don't, I think some people misinterpret what Fox is and sees Fox as being a linear business. We are not defined by the means of distribution of our content. We're, we're defined by the content itself. And so we think that wherever it just so happens that for sports and news, linear distribution is the most effective from a consumer perspective and the most monetizable from a, from a Fox perspective. It's not the means of distribution.
The digital distribution of Fox does nothing for the content 'cause the content is largely consumed live. And so whether that's in a streaming-forward environment or whether it's a traditional linear satellite, linear cable environment, doesn't matter. The content's the content. And the content remains resonating with the consumer as it ever has.
That was the logic as far as the sports JV goes in?
Yeah. 100%. It's like, can we offer the logic of the sports JV is really around we're approaching a point where there are just as many people outside the bundle as there are inside the bundle. And there's clearly frustration with what's inside of the bundle and the price point that that pays and that comes at. And so here's an opportunity to try and acquire more subs that are either cord cutters or cord nevers to take a more narrow, more competitively priced bundle.
So given all that, the slimmed-down portfolio, the strategy of keeping exclusive to the pay-TV ecosystem, just curious, can you share with us your confidence level that Fox can continue to outrun the pressures on the cord cutting side on the linear world? And how we think about overall sustainability of affiliate fee growth?
Affiliate, I think your guess, sorry, your crystal ball is as good as mine in terms of where subs go to. I think from a traditional perspective, we sit on the quarter. It's sort of minus the mid-8s at the moment for us. I think that will change as distribution evolves. I won't give a view about where I see growth in terms of whether it be cable affiliate or TV affiliate going in the future. What I can say with confidence is that our content, coupled with our distribution strategy, should mean that we get an increasing share of wallet because we think that we have invested in the content that counts. Our fidelity towards the bundle should mean that we see that in terms of share of wallet from the distribution landscape.
Okay. So maybe another share of wallet type of question.
On the advertising side. So again, we all know the pressure on the linear TV advertising ecosystem around you. But curious how Fox is positioned or how you would characterize Fox's position to capture that greater share of total ad budgets over the next few years, right, as you think about where the focus on eyeballs is gonna be. Clearly, sports and news plays a big part of that. And as we saw in your Upfront, Tubi plays a critical role there too. So as you think about the total portfolio of Fox, how should we think about capturing more of that ad budget?
No, we think we're really well positioned, right? If you look at ultimately, ad dollars will go to where audience is. And I think our message to advertisers is really simple but really powerful, right, which is it is increasingly difficult to access audience, mass audience, in a single moment in time. And we have that in spades with respect to our sports business, particularly with properties like NFL, MLB, college sports. And then we have that in terms of news with big events. And news also comes with this incredibly engaged and committed audience, right? And so to be able to present that to advertisers as, as sort of our component of the portfolio is, is amazingly powerful.
When we go into, we're in the midst of the upfront at the moment, and you add the fact that this year will be an election year, this year is a Fox Super Bowl year, it becomes a really, really resounding message with advertisers. You then you then that position Tubi within that. And Tubi is still sort of in its, in its early days of development, right? But you, you have this mass audience platform with sports and news. And then you have Tubi, which now is a significant player in the free streaming category, right, like, the biggest in terms of free streaming and, and significant in terms of all streaming, like, 1% share of viewing in terms of Nielsen Gauge, which puts it neck and neck with Disney+, ahead of Paramount, ahead of Peacock, ahead of Roku, ahead of Max.
So it becomes as we talk to agencies and advertisers where Tubi is still nascent in terms of a brand and what the service actually represents, it becomes a must-buy in terms of their media mix. And it's not just a must-buy 'cause of the 1.7%, but it's a must-buy for two other reasons. One is you don't get access to that audience in the traditional world because 60% of Tubi users are cord cutters or cord nevers. And so on the one hand, you've got sports and news that kinda dominate within the cord or on the cord. And then on the other hand, you've got Tubi that services those advertisers outside of that ecosystem.
And then the other piece to Tubi, which is really great, is that a lot of people confuse Tubi as being sort of this passive, FAST channel sort of that just is on constant rotation in the background in a person's household. It's not. 90% of Tubi consumption is VOD, where it's a real lean-forward experience. People have deliberately chosen a title and watched through it. And so it becomes a bit of an irresistible buy for advertisers. Now, we need to do more work with respect to Tubi to get it front and center with agencies and advertisers. And so the upfront is a pretty meaningful step in that direction. But we feel very, very strongly about those three assets being able to flourish in sort of the advertising world in fiscal 2025 and beyond.
I'll come back to Tubi in one second. But just to finish up the point on advertising, clearly, elections.
Yes.
It is a nice tailwind for the overall company. I'm just curious how you think about the political advertising landscape. Obviously, primaries have been a little bit slower. But as we start to ramp up, getting closer to the end of the year and then both from a TV station perspective, Fox News perspective, and maybe even bring in Fox Nation as part of that, maybe less so on the advertising side.
But how that plays into the election cycle.
So to try and give you some sort of dimensioning of it, I think the high watermark was the fiscal 2021, our fiscal 2021, that presidential election. I think we're, we're on record as saying that was 350+. A chunk of that was national. National can fluctuate quite a lot. National is as much substitutional for what we would have placed in non-political as true incremental, right? So where the true incrementality comes through is in local, which is sort of around the give or take around the 250 mark, right? As we look forward to the presidential election, which for us is a July to sort of November event from our fiscal year perspective, current primaries are a bit of a non-event. Presidential election shapes up as gonna be an enormous event.
We'd expect from a presidential race perspective for there to be pretty significant sums of money invested in advertising. We think local we feel very bullish about local's capacity to continue to collect on that. Then you look at our station footprint and how that sits against sort of Senate races. And so got great positions in places like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, even Maryland with our D.C. station. So we won't have Georgia. And we won't have the Georgia runoff, which is a bit of a sort of a headwind versus 2021. But they will be amazing races for us in those markets. And then you look at it at another layer below that, and you look at where issue spend is going to happen. And places like Arizona and Florida are gonna be enormous for that.
We feel really bullish about where we're positioned for this upcoming election from a local TV perspective. News will get a certain amount of political spend. But the biggest uplift for news is not necessarily the direct political spend, but the viewership growth that we're almost certain to see going into the election and our coverage of it, which just dominates all other sort of competitors in terms of election coverage. And so we'd expect that audience to convert into ad revenue irrespective of whether that ad revenue is direct political or just audience-related. So we feel very bullish about where we sit. I'm not sure if we get to the levels we saw in fiscal 2021 because of that Georgia factor. But we're really well positioned.
And so on the Fox Nation piece of that, like, in terms of investing behind it.
Where are we in the life cycle of Fox Nation?
So, Nation, Nation is part of a—I think you gotta say Nation as part of a broader Fox Digital strategy and a broader Fox News Media strategy, right? And so where the investment in Nation year-on-year has been relatively stable. And in the grand scheme of Fox, sort of roughly $3 billion of EBITDA given in any given year is incredibly modest in terms of the option value it gives us, right? And so we have a very strong—I hate to say this word, but we have the strong linear asset in terms of Fox News, Fox Business. We have an incredibly strong and underestimated Fox Digital business, which is the website and the apps. And you'll see us expand that, right, because at the moment, those website and apps are heavily focused, heavily news-focused.
We wanna expand that to sort of encompass lifestyle, more lifestyle because we think that we have license from our viewers to be able to expand and have legitimate voice in those. Then Fox Nation is just another subcomponent of that where it's at the moment, it's more towards the Fox News superfan as another add-on. But as we think about sort of future DTC aspirations for news and how that builds, it gives us a ton of optionality there. So I think you should expect the investment to remain similar to where we are now to drive sort of incremental growth and incremental engagement for that Fox News brand.
Okay, so shifting back to the more scaled digital player, Tubi.
You've already hit on how it's been rising in the ranks in terms of viewership and engagement and advertising, which naturally, obviously, comes with that. So I'm curious, as you think about it, I mean, again, what was a central part of the upfront, how do you balance investing behind it versus that focus on obviously reaching profitability and scaling from there?
No, it's, I think, a quarter, a quarter three years ago, I think it was Tubi was profitable, right? But as Tubi continues to exceed our expectations in terms of, like, 80 million monthly active users, engagement growing 35% last quarter, we don't wanna stunt its growth by pulling back investment too soon. So while those top-line metrics continue to drive forward and you look at it in that landscape, that sort of 1.7 most people wouldn't have even heard of Tubi as a brand 12 months ago even, right? So we think that there's enormous continued upside for Tubi. And we're gonna continue to invest in that. Now, having said that, it's the investment, again, from the if I look at it relative to all of Fox, it's relatively modest.
If I look at that investment versus what some of our peers have spent on driving their streaming business, it's tiny, right? So I think it's incumbent on us to continue to invest in it. But we understand also that eventually, we want that investment to convert into positive EBITDA and become a meaningful profit driver for us. And it will. But in the immediate term, we continue to see upside in it. And we're gonna continue to invest in that growth.
So a question we get a lot from investors (I'm sure you've heard this one before) is given the new competition, focusing specifically on ad budgets, Netflix, Amazon clearly fighting for these connected TV ad dollars, how does that impact the value proposition that, that Tubi can offer advertisers?
Yeah. So, Robert, I think I think there's a short-term and then there's a long-term to this. So I think the short-term from a sort of connected TV dedicated ad budget, there is more inventory in the market. And so as we sit here in Q4, we look at Tubi, it will get its fair share. But we're, we're, we've got that headwind in terms of much more inventory. And then we're also coming off a quarter where this time, 12 months ago, we delivered an enormous quarter, so 47% growth. So I'd expect in the short-term, that's gonna that's gonna have some impact.
I look at it if you look sort of anywhere beyond the short-term. I think you've gotta look at if I'm sitting as an advertiser or an agency, I'm gonna want my dollars to follow where the eyeballs are going and look at where they're coming from and where they're going. And so if I look at the portfolio, they're not really leaving. The audiences aren't leaving sports. The audiences aren't leaving live news. Where they are leaving is linear, linear delivered entertainment.
Okay.
And I think over the sort of beyond the short-term, you're gonna see a transition of dollars away from those kind of assets. And they're gonna shift in towards streaming assets. And we think Tubi is incredibly well positioned to get its—it's not getting its fair share now. So I think it's incredibly well positioned to pick those dollars up.
Okay. So given those pressures on the ecosystem in terms of where their eyeballs are going, shifting over to content spending for a second, I think if I remember correctly, you made an interesting comment on the last earnings call in that the focus is to lean in even more on the non-sports to make it more efficient, on the non-sports content spend. So maybe just talk about how you allocate content spending. Again, the schedule is now out there.
I think you're bringing back a few scripted shows. But just big picture, how do you make sure that balance is in the right spot between sports and non-sports on the programming side?
That's less well spent on sports. And we think we've got a fantastic portfolio of sports rights. And then from a scheduling perspective, that gets us from, like, Friday night through to Sunday night, right? And so then we're still believers in a balanced broadcast network schedule. And so if you look at the remaining, and we have a tighter schedule versus some of the broadcast networks of our peers, right? So we're already efficient because a lot of our non-network programming is local, which is extremely cost-efficient. But when I look at that primetime block that we have, there are different ways to skin that cat. And so we're gonna continue to have a balanced schedule, which is some scripted. We dominate in terms of Animation Domination. It's a real asset for us. And we'll continue to build that.
But when we look sort of at the margin, when we look at a scripted show and the cost per hour of that scripted show versus an unscripted show and the reduced cost per hour for that and the relative rating and revenue differential, oftentimes, it's better to go unscripted. We are working down that cost per hour in primetime. But we're also looking at ways where we do go for scripted or animation at more expansive monetization. So if we believe in a scripted show or an animation show, then we'll often take sort of producer economics in that because we think we can light it up against the sports schedule and really drive downstream revenue, whether it be sales to SVOD, which is an important part of the animation strategy, or having a carry in the show.
But that's going to continue to be sort of a I think more narrow in our schedule versus our peers. But I think, cost per hour definitely comes down across the schedule. And then we think about more expansive monetization as sort of having ownership of the shows or the capacity to license those through to SVOD plays' international downstream windows.
Makes sense. Okay. So clearly, a differentiated asset, and you just hit on it, for the overall company is how big sports plays within this overall ecosystem and specifically for you guys given the narrowed-down portfolio. So I guess the big picture question first on sports is, as you think about all of the challenges happening around you on the linear TV ecosystem, how do you think Fox can remain positioned today to ensure that sports can continue to be the key asset that it is for the company?
I think we've got an amazing runway of rights. We have an amazing portfolio of rights and amazing runway of rights. So if you look at, we got long-term deals for all the key ones: NFL, MLB, college football, NASCAR. So we feel as though that the core of the offering is locked away for a long time to come. And so that's step one. We think from a monetization perspective, the viewership of those assets continues to be as strong as ever, right? And so from a direct monetization perspective, we're still driving the ad revenue. That, that is the most robust part of the ad market. And we're one of the most significant players in that part of the ad market. And then we look at it. And we think, well, the other component of monetization is distribution.
Distribution, we've continued to drive outsized cable affiliate growth and absolutely outsized TV affiliate growth, right? So that's been the biggest driver of return on investment for those sports rights, particularly what we put on the broadcast network. So we feel really, really well positioned with that monetization model. Then we look at it. You think about more expansive ways to think about return on investment for sports rights. So our sports franchise is second to none. So the capacity for us to take that sports franchise and develop something like UFL, which will develop into something that of real asset value, the capacity to take that sports franchise and get ourselves a carry in sports betting is enormous for us, right? Like, if I don't know if you wanna ask about sports betting down the track.
But we've got investment in Flutter and a really, really important option over FanDuel. So when you look at it more expansively, then the sports business is a really, really valuable business for us. And then if you look at the sort of related effects through the portfolio in terms of cross-promotion value into our news assets, cross-promotion value into Tubi, it is still a significant part of our business and a significant economic driver for us.
So you mentioned all the rights that you have locked up. But as part of focusing on the return on investment.
Of some of these sports rights, you've also made the decision to move away from some rights and actually reuse rights in different ways. You mentioned Friday night. So maybe just help us think about those economic decisions that you were forced to make, you know, moving away from WWE and leaning in on Big Ten or other college football rights.
Yeah. So as a portfolio and as an overall spend, we feel like we've got the right investment. Now, within that portfolio, every year, something comes up. And we trade in and out of assets. And we've had enormous amounts of financial discipline as we've thought about the true value of rights. I don't think anyone sort of has a more hard-nosed view about true value of rights. And so we've looked at it; if you look at it, we exited early out of Thursday Night Football because it didn't pencil out for us when you looked at the cost of the rights, the direct ad revenue we wrote for it, and then the impact on affiliates. So we trade out of that early.
We did the same. People often forget about the fact we did the same thing with our USGA rights. WWE is similar. It was great for our Friday nights. It was consistent ratings and engagement. But when we looked at cost versus direct revenue and really put hand on heart about how much it drove retrans, it didn't pencil out for us. And we think we've got a Friday night model that'll drive just as much engagement with sports and be economically accretive for us. And so we feel good about that. And then there are some packages, particularly with respect to college sports, where we've just got too much product, right? And so there, it's a conscious decision for us to sort of sublicense that product.
We are not we are not in the business of rights trading, right? We're not we're not here sort of trying to arb against we buy the rights from the rights holder and then sell it a vig to somebody else. That's, that's just not our business. But we're there are certain situations when you buy more rights than you you've got the capacity to handle. And we're happy to sublicense those at appropriate rates.
Got it. So I think, as you know, we've been long proponents about a sports-led skinny bundle. But we hit on it a little bit earlier. But just given that big announcement that you made, at the beginning of the year and we expect to launch it, by the end of the year, do you see other MVPDs or virtual MVPDs trying to carve out similar types of bundles?
I think, as we think about sort of monetization of sports rights and ROI going forward, I think the $64 question is, can distribution fix itself so that it sort of counters the loss in subs and begins to grow them again, right? Because at the moment, people are put off by the fact the high cost of the bundle. I think the joint venture that we announced will address part of that because it'll be, it has a significant amount of sports between us, ESPN, and Warner Bros. Discovery. And so we think that at the likely price point that that's going to get to helps address some of that either subscriber decline or getting people to go from being cord nevers or cord cutters back into the system.
We'll see what happens with Charter with the rights that they have. We'll see what other distributors are able to do because they have to disentangle themselves from the encumbrances they have with these big channel providers, in terms of being able to get down to a bundle that is much more, call it, skinny. I think it's focused and much more consumer-friendly. We think that whatever composition of that bundle, our sports and news service should be front and center 'cause our sports service is second to none of our news services. When you look at it, it's almost like the fifth network, fifth broadcast network. We, we sort of we're less inclined to compare our sports cable with the, with other certainly with other cable news nets and the cable universe 'cause it just sits head and shoulders above those.
We think we feel super well positioned as the composition of distribution bundles changes.
That's what I was gonna ask you. As it relates to the sports JV, and clearly, the natural question that comes out of that is, does the importance of Fox News diminish to the overall company as part of that? But, I guess.
No, absolutely not. We think that the news franchise is so, so significant to us but so significant to the community at large and the distribution and the fabric of sort of what is provided by distributors that we think as long as we continue to invest in that service and as long as we make it relevant, it's never been more relevant, that's gonna continue to find a home.
Okay. Well, one last one on sports. You mentioned the UFL, the inaugural season.
Well underway. So just maybe help us understand because, again, as now a joint venture partnership.
Yep.
Rather than just the prior owning all of it, just maybe talk about the expectations or opportunities as you see, monetization possibilities, selling teams or full ownership. You know, how should we think about what the long-term business plan is for this, April 15th week?
So take a step back. We had USFL. And there was XFL. And realistically, there wasn't a place for two competing spring leagues. So the obvious decision was to merge the two leagues. And if I look at season-to-date performance, the games we have on the broadcast network are currently averaging about in terms of total audiences, it is about 840,000, which is 40 close to 40% up on where we were last year with USFL and would be the envy of many other sports leagues. So if you look at the growth of UFL as a business, I think step one is the organic growth in the business in terms of so double-edged sword for us but driving broadcast rights higher, ticketing, sponsorship, and growing the revenue base of the existing entity.
If you look at it, if we can get we're currently it's an 8-team competition. If those 8 teams all, all the signs are pointing towards those 8 teams being a pretty successful sort of foundation layer. And then we look at should we add more teams in more cities? And then from a monetization of the asset value, I think a long way down the track and there's no, no immediate plan for this is, is do you as owners of as partial owners of the whole entity, do we look to either sell team franchises and monetize it in that way? Do we sell a component of the equity in the league? But, first, first and foremost, we need to build the asset value in order for those to be options for us. And we think it's off to a fantastic start.
and we feel really encouraged about where that's going.
Cool. So let's just switch over to sports betting. You touched on it a little bit before. But clearly, there's been a rationalization in the overall industry in terms of following a big rush and maybe unrealistic expectations in terms of a lot of the smaller guys getting to scale. So I'm curious, as you think about the overall sports betting landscape, what do you feel Fox's position is from a media partnership perspective? Clearly, Fox Bet is still an option for you.
Wondering how you approach that as it relates to the partnership that you do have with Flutter.
So we've been long-term believers in sports betting. Like, we've seen it in markets that we used to be in, whether it be Australia or the UK and seen how these businesses flourish. And so I think even before the formation of Fox, we'd already made plans at the time with the Stars Group, which then became Flutter.
Right.
that we wanted to be very front foot in terms of sports betting. And you've seen us when you look at what that's resulted in and in terms of being in at the ground floor of this sort of movement, we were quick to invest in Flutter. And that direct equity stake upside is worth somewhere between $850 million-$900 million, which I don't think we get a lot of credit for in some of the parts. And then we have an 18.6% call option over FanDuel, which, who knows how the industry develops. But to me, there's no doubt the industry's gonna continue to grow. Market composition is, does it become two gorillas and then a bunch of also rans? Or is it, or is market share a little bit more spread? We'll see.
At the moment, we feel really good that we've got either number one or number two player. We've got 18.6%. We've also got, and in your note yourself, Robert, I'm trying not to call you Roger because after the Airbnb call, you'll always be Roger to us. But if you look at that 18.6%, you've got it down as $1 billion. We think that might be light in terms of option value. And we get zero credit for that. But the beauty of it is, we've got until December 2030 to make a decision on it. So we will see how the industry develops. We will see how FanDuel develops. Our starting hypothesis is that this is gonna be an incredibly valuable asset for us.
And our position is that at a certain point between now and December 2030, our intention will be to get licensed and convert that into sort of a more hard asset than just option value. But right now, there's no incumbency on us deploying. I think the strike price at the moment would be $4.3-$4.4 billion. And so why put that capital into that asset now when you've got the benefit of the better part of six years to be able to make that decision? So, we're very satisfied with our sports franchise being able to get us these sort of really preferential positions in sort of adjacent assets.
That makes a lot of sense. I like the two gorillas. We call it a two-horse race that clearly the lead continues to expand. So, as I think we're wrapping up on time here, I guess what one last big question for you. Anything you wanna leave us with, highlight to investors that you still think I mean, we've talked on a few of them, not well understood. We didn't talk about the studio a lot. I don't know if you wanna talk about that. But just really at any last message that you wanna leave us with.
No, I think as a last message, when we're three blocks down the street from here. And when we look internally, we definitely feel like we've got a fantastic set of assets. We think they are underappreciated externally. But we also think that focus from a portfolio perspective is also focus from a management perspective. And our focus is just to continue to deliver. So quarter-on-quarter, we continue to sort of deliver EBITDA, deliver free cash flow. We've got best balance sheet in the industry by the length of the street. And so a lot of uncertainty. But there's a lot of uncertainty in every industry whenever you look forward.
We think that we've got, with that position of core assets and assets that sit around those core businesses, we think that we're super well positioned to take advantage of whatever presents itself in the future.
With that, thank you, Steve. Thank you, Roger. And everyone.
Thanks, Robert.
Appreciate you guys coming.
Thank you.
Thank you for having us.