Roku Launches Sports FAST Channel

SAN JOSE— Roku has spent the past several years developing a deep presence in professional sports, inking deals with the NBA, NFL and MLB for exclusive access to live games and dedicated channels. Now it’s launching a new FAST channel to bring all of that top-tier, premium sports content into a dedicated, one-click, lean-back experience for sports fans.

The Roku Sports Channel will go live Aug. 12 and feature a wide breadth of popular sports programming that Roku owns and licenses. Featured content will include live Major League Baseball games with MLB Sunday Leadoff, Emmy-nominated talk show “The Rich Eisen Show,” “GMFB: Overtime,” live races from Formula E, and sports-themed Roku Originals produced with some of the most popular leagues in professional sports, including “NFL Draft: The Pick Is In,” “WWE: Next Gen,” and “Fight Inc: Inside the UFC.” The channel will also include exclusive partner content, like classic boxing matches from Top Rank, combat sports from Swerve Sports, and high-stakes poker entertainment from PokerGO featuring the game’s most popular players.

“A curated always-on channel that leads our viewer through the wide variety of premium sports content available for free on The Roku Channel, Roku Sports Channel is an exciting addition to our expanding sports offering,” said Joe Franzetta, Head of Sports, Roku Media. “We continue to see audiences enjoy the familiar, lean-back experience FAST offers, especially with sports. Sports is one of our most popular channel genres on The Roku Channel, which makes us so excited to make it even easier for audiences to jump into Roku’s standout programming.”

Roku says it will continue to refresh and expand Roku Sports Channel with new and upcoming exclusive programming, including NBA G-League games and the Roku Original WNBA documentary “Renee Montgomery: A Radical Act.” Roku Sports Channel is available on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Streamers can access it through The Roku Channel’s Live TV Guide.

The Roku Channel is available to stream for free, no subscription or sign-up required. Viewers can watch it on Roku devices or TVs, TheRokuChannel.com and through the Roku app on iOS and Android devices, Amazon Fire TVs, Samsung TVs and Google TVs, and other Android TV OS devices.