For years, the streaming wars have been fought on the assumption that the battlefield itself was neutral ground. That assumption ended on Monday.

Fox Corporation announced that it would acquire Roku, the connected-television platform, for $22 billion, a deal that places one of the industry's most important pieces of infrastructure in the hands of a company that also happens to own a great deal of content that runs on it.

The acquisition immediately raised what might be called the landlord problem: Roku has long operated as a kind of Switzerland for streaming, a place where Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+ and dozens of other services could buy advertising and reach audiences without worrying that the platform itself had a dog in the fight. Fox, which owns Tubi, Fox News and the rights to broadcast NFL and Major League Baseball games, has several dogs, and they are large ones.

"The question isn't whether Fox will play favorites," said one media buyer who spoke on condition of anonymity because of ongoing business relationships. "The question is whether anyone will believe them when they say they won't."

(The distinction may be more theological than practical, but on Madison Avenue, theology has a way of affecting media budgets.)

Fox executives have said they intend to maintain Roku's neutrality, a pledge that will be tested the first time a competitor's campaign underperforms against a Tubi house ad in the same inventory auction. Mr. Lachlan Murdoch, the Fox chief executive, did not address the conflict question directly in the company's announcement, focusing instead on the "tremendous scale" the combination would create.

For now, the streamers who depend on Roku's home-screen real estate have few alternatives and little leverage, which may be the point. In the television business, owning the distribution has always mattered more than owning the content.

Fox appears to have remembered that lesson. Whether its rivals had forgotten it is another matter.

Original story published in Adweek: "Fox Just Bought the Platform Its Rivals Depend On"