The news: Super Bowl LIX will stream for free on Tubi, the ad-supported streaming service (FAST) owned by Fox, the company announced this week. This is the first time the Super Bowl will be available on Tubi.

Tubi ascendant: Tubi’s strong user growth and ad spending has made it a bright spot in Fox’s portfolio. Its Super Bowl broadcast is likely to draw significant attention from cord-cutters for its free digital access, giving Fox an opportunity to onboard new viewers during the most-watched event of the year.

• The number of subscription video-on-demand services has increased dramatically in recent years, as has the price of ad-free alternatives and the barrier of entry for sports streaming packages like YouTube’s NFL Sunday Ticket.
• Those rising costs have created an appetite among consumers for cheaper, ad-supported subscription tiers, but also for FAST services and free entertainment, hence Tubi’s rise. Its success attracting new viewers and political ad dollars in 2024 showed that there is significant appetite—and opportunity—for live, free digital video around major events.
• We forecast that Tubi’s US ad revenues will pass $1 billion for the first time this year, climbing 19.2% to $1.17 billion. The streaming service also launched in the UK last year in an effort to capitalize on the market’s FAST viewership boom, though it faces stiff competition from entrenched streamers.

What’s next: Tubi will have to prove that it can handle the large viewership that its broadcast is likely to attract in order to prove to new viewers and advertisers that its service is worth returning to. Ensuring stable broadcasts during high viewership events is no easy task—even Netflix is still working out the kinks in live broadcasting.

Beyond Tubi, this year’s Super Bowl is set to be one of the most-viewed in recent memory thanks to consistent viewership growth and a deal with NBCUniversal to provide multiple Spanish-language broadcasts of the game.