Reuters
- Roku has acquired the rights to Quibi’s content.
- The streaming company revealed Friday that the Roku Channel — Roku’s free streaming channel for airing TV, movies, sports, and news — will now be the home of more than 75 shows and documentaries created by Quibi.
- The content will be free for Roku users throughout 2021, though viewers will be shown ads. Terms of the deal were not announced.
- The deal comes less than three months after the mobile-video platform announced it was shutting down, just six months after it launched.
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Streaming company Roku announced Friday that it has acquired the rights to Quibi’s content following the shut-down of the short-form video platform late last year.
The Roku Channel, Roku’s free streaming channel for TV, movies, sports, and news, will now be the home of more than 75 shows and documentaries created by Quibi, Roku said. The content will be free for Roku users throughout 2021, though viewers will be shown ads. Terms of the deal were not announced.
The shows and films coming to Roku star a range of well-known actors and TV personalities, including Kevin Hart, Liam Hemsworth, Anna Kendrick, and Chrissy Teigen. Roku also said that more than dozen new programs will debut on the Roku Channel as part of the deal.
“The most creative and imaginative minds in Hollywood created groundbreaking content for Quibi that exceeded our expectations,” Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg said in a statement. “We are thrilled that these stories, from the surreal to the sublime, have found a new home on The Roku Channel.”
Roku's deal with Quibi comes less than three months after the short-lived streaming service announced it was shutting down.
Quibi struggled to gain a foothold in the streaming industry after its launch last April. The service was intended to be used on-the-go, but the timing of its launch coincided with the coronavirus outbreak, which meant fewer people commuting and an economic downtown that may have made customers hesitant to pay for a new subscription.
And despite the roster of impressive Hollywood talent, none of Quibi's shows became major hits.
A slew of big-name investors and powerful names were attached to the service, including DreamWorks founder Katzenberg and former Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman. Quibi raised $1.75 billion from investors like Walmart, PepsiCo, and Anheuser-Busch ahead of its launch.