Roku is moving further into the world of sports with Roku Sports Channel, a free and ad-supported offering that will launch Monday.
The upcoming hub will include Major League Baseball games with MLB Sunday Leadoff, which Roku acquired the rights to in May. The channel will also feature live races from Formula E, the Emmy-nominated talk show “The Rich Eisen Show” and “GMFB: Overtime,” a reboot of the NFL’s “Good Morning Football.”
As for originals, this new channel will be home to sports-themed Roku originals such as the second season of “NFL Draft: The Pick Is In,” the partnership between NFL Films and Skydance Sports that was the most watched original doc in Roku’s history during its first season; “WWE: Next Gen,” an eight-part docuseries from executive producer John Cena about athletes trying to get a contract with the sports entertainment league; and “Fight Inc: Inside the UFC,” a behind-the-scenes deep dive into what it takes to run the world’s premier mixed martial arts organization that focuses on CEO Dana White.
The channel will additionally include exclusive partner content such as boxing matches from Top Rank, combat sports from Swerve Sports and poker games from PokerGO.
Moving forward, the Roku Sports Channel will expand its lineup with upcoming exclusive programming, which will include NBA G-League games and the Roku Original WNBA documentary “Renee Montgomery: A Radical Act.” The doc comes from Emmy-winning director Sandrine Orabona (“Savage X Fenty Show”) and focuses on Montgomery, the former Minnesota Lynx star who became the first former WNBA player to be both a co-owner and executive of a WNBA team.
In the United States, the Roku Sports Channel will be available on The Roku Channel. Streamers will be able to access it through The Roku Channel’s Live TV Guide.
During Roku’s most recent earnings report, the company revealed it’s up to 83.6 million streamers, a 2 million streamer increase from the first quarter of this year. That was also a 14% increase compared to the second quarter in 2023.