Fox is not “leaving money on the table” relative to not having its own streamer. Fox is making a different bet on the future of TV than the other three OTA networks.
The other three have all started steamers to provide (in addition to other, mostly melodramatic, content,) access to their linear OTA and “cable” networks’ programming, including sports. All lose money.
Fox is simply maintaining its commitment to its existing linear distribution model. This is, IMHO, very smart on its part. IF (the biggest word in the English language) the death of OTA and linear “cable” channels ever actually happens, then Fox can launch a streaming service then, having not lost all the $$ the other three are in this era. IF not, then it bet correctly all along. Either way, Fox wins.
Nah. Fox is a little company now without its own studio and major content library. When Murdoch sold all those assets to Disney, the ship sailed on Fox launching a major SVOD to compete with the big boys, so that's not a bet they could really place even if they wanted to.
What they're doing instead is focusing on the only stuff folks still get cable TV for, live sports and news/politics, milking the cable bundle for all they can get out of as it slowly dies, while betting on free ad-supported streaming via Tubi as their next-gen play. And they're still making a little incremental money from SVOD by continuing to license their Fox entertainment shows for next-day streaming on Disney's Hulu.
I give it another couple years but at some point, they'll determine (just as Disney will with ESPN) that there's more money to be made by taking all their content directly to consumers via streaming than trying to prop up the dying cable bundle. That's when they'll begin including a live stream of Fox News inside the Fox Nation app. And they'll exercise whatever live streaming sports rights they have by selling those to consumers too, either through their own app (e.g. a paid section within Tubi) or by sub-licensing those rights to others (e.g. Amazon, Apple, ESPN).
Likewise, Disney has repeatedly stated that eventually they will bring all of ESPN directly to consumers via streaming, no cable bundle needed. IMO, ESPN is a much bigger factor than Fox in terms of being the little Dutch boy plugging his finger in the hole in the cable TV dam to keep it from bursting. When they take ESPN direct-to-consumer, it'll be an inflection point. To misquote Louis XV, "
Après ça, le déluge." My best guess for when that happens? 2024.