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Sud said an Onion article was one of the first things she read about Tubi. | Source: Courtesy Tubi<\/p>\nPublished Sep. 23, 2026at6:00am<\/p>\n
When Tubi\u2019s first CEO, Farhad Massoudi, decided to enter the streaming wars in 2014, he had long odds and little financing. \u201cNo one was going to license me any content, because I didn\u2019t have any money,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Undeterred, he built Tubi\u2019s catalog with whatever he could get his hands on for cheap: B-movies, trashy horror flicks, and long-canceled TV shows collecting dust in studio archives. \u201cNo recognizable movies, few recognizable actors,\u201d Massoudi quipped.<\/p>\n
People tuned in anyway. As a free, ad-supported streaming service, Tubi attracted cord-cutters looking to save a buck. But viewers also genuinely fell in love with its niche programming, leading the company to lean into the type of content Hollywood didn\u2019t care about. It\u2019s a strategy that turned a once-afterthought service into one of the biggest forces in online television.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sud said an Onion article was one of the first things she read about Tubi. | Source: Courtesy Tubi<\/p>\n
These days, Tubi\u2019s catalog does feature some blockbuster and critically adored films, including \u201cAmerican Fiction,\u201d \u201cJumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,\u201d and \u201cSuperbad,\u201d as well as popular TV shows like \u201cThis Is Us,\u201d \u201cThe Bachelorette,\u201d and \u201cMy Little Pony.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it also continues to host plenty of B-movies, trash horror, and other oddities. With more than 375,000 movies and TV show episodes, Tubi has one of the largest streaming catalogs in the industry. (In contrast, Netflix\u2019s U.S. catalog consists of just 8,000 titles, according to streaming data aggregator Justwatch.)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt started as a necessity,\u201d said Anjali Sud, who succeeded Massoudi as Tubi\u2019s CEO in 2023. \u201cIt\u2019s become our secret weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a weapon that could soon get a lot more powerful. Tubi\u2019s corporate parent, Fox, is in the process of acquiring streaming device and smart TV maker Roku, which could lead to Tubi getting primetime placement on more than 100 million screens (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The streamer of the people<\/p>\n Massoudi\u2019s journey to streaming began with a seed round of investment from his former college roommate. Modest by nature and acutely aware of the risks involved, Massoudi initially tried to talk his friend out of investing. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t afford to lose the money,\u201d Massoudi said. \u201cI knew nothing about the TV and movie ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n What he lacked in experience, he made up for with grit and determination. Like any San Francisco startup founder, he tweaked, iterated, and pivoted \u2014 Tubi\u2019s first iteration was a B2B business that built streaming apps for other publishers \u2014 until he arrived at what he believed to be the winning formula: a streaming service with a large catalog of free, ad-supported content.<\/p>\n There wasn\u2019t much confidence in this vision. \u201cMy board freaked out,\u201d Massoudi said. \u201cSome of them want me to shut down the company.\u201d Raising money proved just as challenging. \u201cI pitched every VC known to mankind,\u201d he said. \u201cLiterally over 400.\u201d The answer was always no, a fact Massoudi chalks up to snobbishness.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, a lot of VCs invest in products they personally want to use. A free streaming service does not resonate with someone worth $10 million.\u201d<\/p>\n Investors instead fawned over Netflix, which in 2007 started its transition from mailing DVDs to streaming and was beginning to amass millions of subscribers. \u201cA lot of them told me, \u2018Ads are over. No one wants to see ads anymore,\u2019\u201d Massoudi recalled.<\/p>\n Nowadays, almost every streaming service embraces advertising.<\/p>\n Ads offer a second revenue stream as subscriber growth starts to hit a ceiling. And as consumers abandon traditional networks for streamers, brands with billions in ad dollars need new ways to reach them. Rather than cede that money to Google and Instagram, media companies like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery jumped at the chance to rebuild ad-supported TV online.<\/p>\n Tubi launched in 2014, a year after Netflix debuted \u201cHouse of Cards,\u201d its first major original series. The Los Gatos-based streamer spent a reported $100 million on the first two seasons of the show, signaling to Hollywood that building the HBO of streaming was going to require big, HBO-like budgets.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe feedback I got from every investor was: You need to do a very expensive original [like] \u2018Game of Thrones\u2019 [or] \u2018House of Cards\u2019 and put all the marketing budget behind it,\u201d Massoudi said.<\/p>\n Tubi didn\u2019t have the cash to produce the next \u201cBreaking Bad,\u201d and most studio executives believed that free streaming turned their cherished IP into internet junk, as worthless as cat videos and dumb memes. \u201cWe kept getting rejected, and rejected, and rejected,\u201d\u00a0 Massoudi recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, he wasn\u2019t ready to give up on free streaming. \u201cI was willing to die on this path,\u201d he said. And Tubi almost did. \u201cWe were within a week of bankruptcy twice.\u201d Shunned by Hollywood and with little money, the company struck deals on the fringes of the entertainment industry: horror movie producers, Blaxploitation film studios, and little-known indies with nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n One early success was the Detroit urban drama \u201cPlug Love\u201d from indie filmmaker Derek Scott. Without theatrical distribution, it seemed destined for DVD bargain bins. But on Tubi, Scott dominated the viewing charts. \u201cHe was crushing it,\u201d Massoudi said.<\/p>\n Tubi was able to strike a deal with Paramount in 2015 that allowed it to stream \u201cTop Gun\u201d and a few other titles from the back catalog. \u201cWhen we licensed those movies, it helped a ton with press and marketing,\u201d Massoudi said. Investors were starting to take notice, as were other Hollywood executives. Doors started to open.\u00a0<\/p>\n But when Tubi employees crunched the numbers, they discovered something strange. \u201cPeople weren\u2019t watching \u2018Top Gun,\u2019\u201d Massoudi said. Instead, they were burning through hours of obscure horror flicks, oddball reality TV, and B-movie fare. One surprise hit: the Lifetime reality show \u201cLittle Women: Atlanta.\u201d \u201cThe real business was what the industry called crap,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Massoudi decided to double down on his audience\u2019s penchant for the weird and obscure and kept spending on the niche programming that\u00a0 entertainment industry insiders refer to as \u201clong-tail content.\u201d The idea: Instead of forking over a lot of money on a few blockbusters, Tubi would spend small amounts on a large number of titles. Compared title by title, those movies may not fare as well as well-known franchises, but in the aggregate, this \u201clong tail\u201d often performs better than a few expensive hits, Massoudi said.<\/p>\n \u201cTubi\u2019s voluminous selection and depth of content has been pivotal to their success,\u201d said Omdia media and entertainment analyst Paul Erickson. \u201cIt\u2019s been a differentiator for them compared to others\u2019 propositions. By investing in depth and diversity in their catalog, they\u2019ve maximized their content ROI.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As Tubi\u2019s viewership kept growing, so did its ad business. Four years after its launch, the company surpassed 1,000 advertisers. These days, the company boasts that a majority of Fortune 100 brands are advertising to its audience.<\/p>\n Just as the numbers kept going up, so did Tubi\u2019s reputation for corny, offbeat content. In early 2023, the Onion ran a story (opens in new tab)<\/a> titled \u201cTubi CEO combs through Goodwill used DVDs looking for movies to upload.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis one\u2019s just someone\u2019s high school graduation ceremony? Eh, fuck it. At least it\u2019s not scratched,\u201d said one satirical quote from the article.<\/p>\n Far from being offended, Massoudi was honored by the homage, not the least of which because it had a kernel of truth about Tubi\u2019s business strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved that,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was one of the greatest moments of my career.\u201d<\/p>\n King of the trash heap<\/p>\n When Fox acquired Tubi in April 2020 for $440 million in cash, it unlocked scores more premium content, including primetime shows like \u201cLego Masters\u201d and \u201cMasterChef,\u201d as well as movies like \u201cTwilight,\u201d \u201cTrolls,\u201d and \u201cMean Girls.\u201d In 2025, Tubi even streamed the Super Bowl.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, the ethos that one person\u2019s trash is another\u2019s treasure lives on within the company. Since teaming up with Fox, Tubi has started to produce some original shows and made-for-streaming movies with a heavy focus on Black action thrillers, horror, and offbeat humor. Among the more notable projects: \u201cCinnamon,\u201d a Blaxploitation homage starring Pam Grier that has a young stripper joining a gang of vampire hunters.<\/p>\n Sud, who was hired by Fox to run the streamer, freely admits that she had a bit of catching up to do to get ready for the job. \u201cI didn\u2019t know Tubi before,\u201d she said. So she turned to Google \u2014 and the Onion piece was one of the first stories that came up.<\/p>\n One of the first things she said during an interview was: \u201cHave you seen the Onion article?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sud quickly realized that Tubi\u2019s penchant for long-tail content was worth embracing. \u201cWe let our fans be the arbiters of quality,\u201d she said, adding that stepping outside of Hollywood\u2019s beaten path also helps to raise new voices. \u201cThe Black filmmaker community in Detroit is thriving,\u201d Sud said. \u201cThey have great stories, and they can\u2019t find an audience.\u201d<\/p>\n Tubi is helping such filmmakers find fans by betting heavily on personalization powered by machine learning. \u201cThe key part of it is: How do you match people to those [titles] and let them go down those rabbit holes? That\u2019s core to our DNA,\u201d said Tubi\u2019s chief product officer, Mike Bidgoli, the very friend who wrote Massoudi that crucial seed-round check. After working as an ad executive for Pinterest and Meta, Bidgoli joined Tubi in May 2024. \u201cHe knows Tubi\u2019s roots, and he\u2019s been a believer,\u201d Sud said.<\/p>\n More recently, Tubi started to embrace a type of modern B-content that defies the traditional entertainment industry: long-form videos by TikTok and YouTube influencers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company has struck deals with 400 influencers, including YouTube duo Rhett & Link and TikTok star Celina Myers, and added 25,000 of their videos to its catalog. \u201cThe idea of creators [vs.] Hollywood: These are just industry definitions,\u201d Sud said. \u201cConsumers don\u2019t care. They just want great storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n One benefit of working with creators is that they have built-in audiences. When Tubi decided to turn the popular online novel \u201cThe QB Bad Boy and Me\u201d into a full-length romance flick, it recruited Noah Beck for the main role. The TikTok star has more than 32 million followers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The few critics who bothered to review the resulting Tubi-exclusive movie, \u201cSidelined: The QB and Me,\u201d largely panned it as\u00a0 \u201cstreaming-age bubblegum (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790170932_172_-S3840x2880-FPNG.png\"\/)
AdRise wall at HQ in San Francisco. | Source: Courtesy Tubi![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790170933_341_-S3840x2880-FPNG.png\"\/)
HQ of Tubi during the Super Bowl. | Source: Courtesy Tubi<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/-S3840x5510-FPNG.png\"\/)
More than 20 million people have streamed this Tubi original movie. | Source: Courtesy Tubi<\/p>\n![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/-S3840x2709-FPNG.png\"\/)
Sud speaks at the opening of the headquarters. | Source: Tayfun Coskun\/Getty Images<\/p>\n