The boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson attracted record viewership, but both the quality of the event and the broadcast left much to be desired.
Friday, Nov. 15, marked a record-breaking night for Netflix, with nearly 60 million households tuning in to watch the live fight between YouTuber Jake Paul and boxer Mike Tyson. During prime time, the platform reported almost 65 million concurrent users watching the event. These figures are impressive, but there’s also some bad news.
Multiple records. Netflix officials didn’t just highlight the boxing livestream’s record viewership. They also noted that the previous fight featuring boxers Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor garnered nearly 50 million viewers. According to the platform, that fight was likely “the most watched professional women’s sporting event in U.S. history.”
Trending on X and thousands of dollars in ticket sales. The buzz surrounding the fight was huge, with #PaulTyson trending as the top worldwide topic on X, while #Serrano ranked second in the U.S., Spain, Brazil, and Canada. Additionally, the event generated $18 million in ticket sales at the venue in Arlington, Texas. Organizers doubled the previous record for any boxing or MMA event, and it became the highest-grossing fight ever held outside of Las Vegas.
That’s not boxing. The truth is that the fight’s reviews were overwhelmingly negative. Tyson, at the age of 58 (almost 30 years older than Paul), managed to hold on until the end. However, throughout the fight, he threw only 97 punches, landing just 18 on his opponent.
Many viewers felt the fight resembled a pantomime, and notable personalities even said that they stopped watching. NBA star Magic Johnson pointed out, “This fight tonight was not great for boxing.” Former heavyweight champion and boxing legend Evander Holyfield also expressed his disappointment, stating, “That wasn’t a good [fight].”
Problems with Netflix. The problems weren’t limited to the quality of boxing on display. Many users also experienced interruptions during the livestream. The live broadcast used buffering techniques to download and stream the video in chunks, but this process failed to work effectively, leading to cuts and image quality issues.
“This is unwatchable.” Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy commented on the broadcast disruptions in an X post, writing, “So the reports are in. #netflix wasn’t ready for this. This is unwatchable.” The hashtags #Unwatchable and #NetflixCash quickly trended on X, with many others echoing this sentiment on other social media platforms like Reddit.
Netflix and its challenges with live events. While the platform has been working on broadcasts of major events for some time, it has yet to execute them properly. It began experimenting with livestreams in April 2023 with the Love is Blind event but encountered so many problems that it ended up releasing it as an on-demand program the following day.
Image | Venti Views
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