Jake Paul and Mike Tyson Fight Sets Big Netflix Streaming Record Despite Technical Issues

After a year of being one of the most talked about events in sport, Paulo x Tyson set a huge streaming record for Netflix. Pitting social media influencer Jake Paul against sports icon Mike Tyson, the boxing match was in the works in November 2023 before being confirmed in March 2024 as an exhibition fight with Netflix set to broadcast the event live. alive. After several delays due to Tyson’s health issues, Paulo x Tyson It was officially scheduled for November 15th, with the two fighters having a heated confrontation at the final press conference.

After the event, Netflix shared the first preview information for Paulo x Tyson. The boxing match attracted a total of 60 million live viewing homes around the worldwith the broadcast peaking at 65 million concurrent viewers, while the co-main event of Serrano vs. Taylor 2 attracted an estimated 50 million live households. This figure puts Paulo x Tyson above Netflix’s previous best-performing live stream of Tom Brady’s Roast for approximately 1.8 million simultaneous streams.

What this means for the future of Netflix

The streamer still has a long way to go before perfecting live broadcasts

At first sight, Paulo x Tyson achieving such a high viewership record is a great sign of their continued investment in future live events. The streamer has already signed a 10-year deal with WWE for weekly live programmingwhich is set to begin with streaming Crude in January 2025 in the US, Canada, UK and Latin America before expanding to other territories over time. They also have a deal with the NFL to broadcast at least one Christmas game per year, with 2024 seeing both broadcast on the platform.

That said, the streamer still has a long way to go before it considers expanding its live streaming portfolio. Paulo x Tyson dominated social media in part due to its technical problemswith some reports indicating that more than 90,000 families suffered disruptions in the hour leading up to the start of the fighting, while countless others lamented continued disruptions throughout the fighting. With the streamer having an estimated 283 million users worldwide, if having 60 million users tuning in worldwide leads to outages, they will need to adjust their servers to better serve broader events.

Our take on Paul’s record numbers vs. Tyson and the Future Live on Netflix

Controversy sells well in sports

Ultimately, it’s not a big surprise to me that Paulo x Tyson It ended up being as big a record as ever. Both fighters have plenty of power behind their names, although Paul certainly fueled anticipation for the fight with his over-the-top and offensive boast against the former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. When combined with what is still considered the #1 streaming platform in the world, the fight was practically destined to set some viewership records.

That being said, the plethora of technical issues Netflix users have encountered when trying to stream Paulo x Tyson live doesn’t give me much confidence in the platform’s future live broadcasts. Considering the planned push for more events, I’d like to think they plan to address these issues in advance, but until they release some sort of statement apologizing or acknowledging users who experienced interruptions when trying to watch the fight, I remain a little skeptical about the future of WWE and the NFL.

Source: Netflix