Fox Sports Hires Tom Brady As Lead Analyst, Following His NFL Retirement

Tom Brady is heading to Fox Sports—eventually. The NFL player will join the company as lead analyst, whenever he retires from football, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch told investors during Fox’s earnings call Tuesday morning. “Immediately following his playing career, whenever that may be, seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady will be joining us as our lead analyst,” Murdoch said. As part of the long-term agreement, Brady will call Fox’s biggest NFL games alongside Kevin Burkhardt, but it doesn’t seem like Brady will have left the game in time to call Super Bowl 57, which Fox has broadcast rights to. The quarterback retired following last season, but reversed course in March and announced his return to football. In non-Brady earnings news, Fox reported 9% advertising revenue growth in its third quarter to $1.3 billion, down from the $2.4 billion from last quarter. TV advertising grew 6%, led by streaming service Tubi. Tubi’s ad growth accelerated from 40% in the December quarter to 50% this past quarter, which Lachlan said was due to increased engagement. Fox reported that Tubi’s total view time (TVT) increased 50% and had record quarterly viewership. Tubi delivered 18 of its top 20 TVT days in the past quarter, and now has more than 42,000 titles in the past quarter. The streamer also secured renewed distribution deals with Amazon, and signed a custom deal with Samsung’s smart TVs. The company highlighted its sports slate as a particular strength, including the NFL, MLS and Formula 1, as well as the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup. And unlike a lot of its competitors, Fox will keep its sports on linear, not streaming. “Our key rights deserve the ability to stay on our broadcast and cable networks exclusively,” said Lachlan. “It both gives our league partners the most breadth and reach that they can achieve in viewership for their fans, but also it's really key to our distribution strategy.” Almost upfront time The company’s upfront is set to take place on Monday in New York, but Lachlan said Fox has already spent “several weeks” engaging with clients and advertisers, and Tubi has been “at the forefront” of those conversations. “Our clients can see both a shift to AVOD and to streaming advertising, at the same time they see the strength of where Tubi is positioned to be a leader in that market,” said Lachlan. “We’re seeing really solid demand across our businesses,” he added, noting that entertainment is seeing pricing in mid to high single-digit range above last year, and sports and news in mid-double-digit gains. “That gives us a great deal of confidence as we move into these upfront negotiations,” Lachlan said. Still no Fox Nation numbers Fox continues to remain coy about its streaming service Fox Nation, once again not giving investors an update on any subscriber numbers. Lachlan did say the subscriber base has “more than tripled” in less than 18 months, but offered no insight as to what those numbers actually are. “The avid Fox News fans have clearly embraced the Fox Nation platform as demonstrated by its consistently high conversion rate of trials to paid subscribers, and retention rates well above industry averages,” he said. Streaming service Fox Weather is also allegedly doing well, which gained distribution on Roku, YouTube TV and Amazon, “resulting in sequential growth and total view time” across each month of the quarter, but again, no hard numbers there.