Roku Adds TMZ, Young Turks and Live Sports to Roku Channel

By Janko Roettgers

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Roku has added videos from , The Young Turks, America’s Funniest Home Videos, FailArmy and a number of other publishers to its ad-supported Channel this week. The company also included some niche sports publishers, a first for the channel that focused almost exclusively on movies and TV shows at launch.

Some of the new sports publishers include the Adventure Sports Network, and outdoor and adventure sports publisher that live streams events like the Dew Tour and Surfer Awards;  Combat Go, a martial arts network specializing in MMA, Muay Thai, wrestling and boxing; and Edgesport, which is dedicated to skateboarding and other action sports, with live coverage and video highlights from events like Street League Skateboarding, Crankworx, FISE World Tour, and the Freeride World Tour.

The update to the Roku Channel comes after the company’s latest earnings report , which showed that Roku surpassed $100 million in non-hardware revenue in the latest quarter for the first time in its corporate history. Executives attributed much of that to growing ad revenues, with video ad dollars more that doubling year-over-year.

“The Roku Channel is super important,” said Roku CEO Anthony Wood in an interview with Variety following the company’s earnings report. “A material percentage of our advertising now flows through the Roku Channel.”

Wood added that the company had plans to add more content to the channel over time. “There is a huge amount of library content around the world,” he said. “Free content is a big opportunity.”

Other publishers added in this week’s update include People Are Awesome, the Pet Collective, esports-centric Wham network and Stadium, a sports publisher that is bringing five daily shows as well as select live games and other sports content to the channel.