So, for those of you who don't know, Charlie came from Fox. Charlie was the president of Fox Entertainment, and he was a Hollywood guy. Now, he's back to being on the East Coast. We're both very miserable Jets fans together.
So, when we have these sports conversations, I wanted to make sure we talked about three very different types of sports. We were talking about the NBA with NBC. Analie and I were just talking a lot about football. Roku has dabbled in live rights of its own with the MLB and with baseball. So, Charlie, why did you decide to experiment with baseball? And what does that deal look like?
By the way, first of all, thank you for having me. And how awful that every time we speak together, she leads with the Jets. So, that is a — in a sports room, it's a cry for help. We admit it. Well, look, I would slightly disagree with the supposition that we dabble in sports because every single sporting event in television is on the Roku platform. You had Mark and Mike up here first. We drove more people to the Olympics. We partnered proudly with the Olympics. For those who don't know what Roku is, Roku is the number one television operating system in the US, Canada, and Mexico. We're a global platform, and what we do is we're the front door to television. We very much root for Analie and root for Mike and Mark, and what we do is build platforms that elevate their programming. I thought it was interesting. You had one of the greatest sportscasters in the world saying it's a buffet and we host the buffet, right? And we help be the lead-in to everything that's been mentioned. We drove more people to the Super Bowl on Tubi than anybody. And we take great pride in their partnership and the promotion. And that's what we do. You say I used to be a Hollywood guy. I love Hollywood still. And this is my first programming job, which is half my hat. I run all of Roku Media. There's the first programming job where I can root for everybody's programming and then build the platform that helps you find it. If Mike got up here and had to say Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, really what'll happen is we have the most simple, delightful way to find everything you want at scale. And so that's what we do. And yes, we have Major League Baseball, and it's been a great partnership.
It's so true that you're the front door to the internet — the world of streaming, rather. Like anything, any app that you need, you can get it through your Roku, and those apps all have live sports. So, I appreciate that clarification. On the live sports front, though, on the rights, exclusive rights — that's the deal I want to hear a little bit more about. Why did you decide that it was worth the investment, and why the MLB?
Oh, it's a great question. So, the MLB, I think first of all, they're terrific partners, and if you want to talk about docs and shoulder programming, we do so much more than the live games. We actually just announced today we're doing a documentary on the history of the home run called Going, Going, Gone, and we're doing it with MLB Productions. It's a Roku Original. Really excited for that. And of course, we have the lead-in game every Sunday. So, if we're the lead-in to television, to have the first game every Sunday that leads into the biggest sports day of the week is a really great place to teach people not just the game we've got, but everything that's happening in baseball and sports across really the sports universe. So, it makes a lot of sense for our brand as the lead-in to have the leading game. And then we don't just have the games, we have a Sport Zone, which is where so many people found the Olympics or the Super Bowl or every other MLB game. We have highlights and clips. We have a fast channel. We have documentaries. And so all of a sudden, if you're a baseball fan, which I am, we want to not just elevate our game, but elevate everyone's game. And so you say you're a Jets fan — think about how many different places you'll have to go to watch that game. And what we do at Roku is make it simple and delightful to find it, and much easier than having to have someone explain the nights of the week.
Yes, much, much easier. When we think about your journey with live rights, baseball is obviously the most high-profile, but you do a few others. Like, what is Roku's game plan for exploring live rights? Do you plan to do a lot more? Are you still in the experimental phase?
Yeah, it's a great question. Actually, Analie said you lead with the audience. I hope every programmer leads with the audience. And we go where there are areas of passion. And again, if you start with the fundamental premise that Roku is going to have everyone's programming, that's what we do. In half the country, we're the front door to television. So then we have to say, okay, which rights can we elevate that are others, and which rights are ours, and where can we go deeper? So we do have the X Games, and that's a passionate audience that we know we can serve. When we saw the audience demand because of our data on the platform, of course, that's a good investment for us. We have all sorts of women's sports, and we have a women's sports zone, and we invested in women's volleyball. We invested in women's soccer. And really, I think platforms like ION that had the Caitlin Clark games as part of their package before Caitlin Clark blew up — we absolutely made sure that we got our viewers to those games on ION. It wasn't our rights, but it was absolutely our right to elevate that pop cultural moment. In the macro, if you step back, the platforms, by definition — and this was true in the phones, you think about it, you have an iOS or an Android — the platforms are bigger than the pieces on the platform. And so if the platform's bigger than the pieces, we're largely the app store for television. With also, we have the biggest AVOD service of them all. I mean, Nielsen Gauge came out yesterday — Roku Channel, so not our platform, just the channel, where we're an ad-supported video on demand service — is the biggest in the country. We represent over 5% of streaming and over 2% of all — 2.5% of all television watching, and we're growing. First quarter to first quarter, we were up 84% year-over-year. So, Trent, thank you for that applause. She doesn't even work for me. That's great. And so to have the scale of a publisher backed by the scale of a platform and be able to elevate all the programmers that I work with and appreciate and their product — that's what we do.
So then I'm going to ask you the same thing I asked Analie, because what Roku's mission is is a little bit different. You obviously have that AVOD, ad-supported free service, but then you are the operating system, the front door to the television and streaming universe. What is it that you use to measure success? Is it the number of OS users? Is it the amount of minutes that people spend in the Roku ecosystem? Mark Marshall said it was revenue. Is it ad revenue?
It's all of that. So we obviously — we're an ad-supported. AVOD means ad-supported video on demand. So we are an ad-supported business, and we're very proud of that business. But of course it's engagement. It's viewership. It is, for me, it's actually making sure there's still scale in television. If you think about our home screen, it reaches households with 125 million people in it every day. And so in a world of fragmentation, to have scale at the platform level when you come to the front door to engage people there — and by the way, we can engage them with short form or storytelling or just to help them find what they love. We can build content and experiences. So if you're a — I know there's a sports event, we have a Sports Zone. If you're a food fan, we have All Things Food, where all of our original programming and food and every food show you love across the history of television and current is available. And that organizing principle in a world of fragmentation, in that buffet Mike Teixeira talked about — we like to make sure you get what you want, and then get a ton of stuff that we curate and create for you that surprise and delight you.
I always kind of think of it in my mind like a grocery store. Like, you know, you need to get certain ingredients. It's on the grocery store to make it as easy as possible to find the ingredients that you need. That's sort of what the Roku experience feels like to me.
Well, and I think it's great. I also think we are — for the advertiser, we're the endcap display. For the partner, we make sure that if they're investing in the Super Bowl on Tubi, we want our viewers to know where to find it. And so we are the grocery store, but we also produce a heck of a lot of the produce as well.
Of course. And now produce, as you just mentioned, it's a lot of your own originals, too. You guys actually bought This Old House — like, you bought a content company. Is that something we should expect more from you?
Look, we are always looking at opportunities to measure what the audience wants. Again, we have a huge fandom for all things home, which is the zone where something like This Old House would live. There are 40-plus seasons, plus we're making new ones, plus we're building Spanish-language originals. They go into Mexico. We have so many opportunities to curate and elevate our own original storytelling, but then put it next to the creators and other curation that you'd be fascinated by. And that's why our engagement is growing, because we serve you a lot of what you're looking for and a ton of other things that elevate the experience.
I once had someone tell me that — I don't know if it was you or someone else from Roku — that a measurement of success for Roku is when you're walking down a busy city street at night and you see purple coming out of the windows. That's how you know that Roku is killing it.
That sounds a little creepy. Purple is our screensaver. It's called Roku City. It was a screensaver. It's now an immersive, interactive, ad-supported environment. Literally 40 million people a day plus will see Roku City. So even that platform within our platform has become a content expression. And, you know, Analie mentioned the social aspect of what we do. People are online and talking about what happens in Roku City, I think around once every nine to 10 minutes, just on what used to be a screensaver is now an ad-supported platform.
