Netflix broke a record with the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight, but it's not a success

On the night of November 15 to 16, 2024, more than 60 million households watched the boxing fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, a famous YouTuber. This is a record for a live Netflix event, but paradoxically a technical failure. Once again, Netflix suffered from numerous bugs.

Netflix and live streaming are still not that. For several years, the streaming giant has been experimenting with live broadcasting in order to possibly one day broadcast major events such as sports competitions or current affairs magazines. Netflix has notably live-streamed tennis or golf tournaments, as well as live shows. The company has, for the moment, always been the victim of technical problems. We particularly remember the Chris Rock show, which was unavailable to many viewers, or the special Love is blindultimately recorded due to a live issue.

On the night of November 15 to 16, 2024, Netflix created a sensation with an improbable event: a boxing match between YouTuber Jake Paul (27), known for his sense of provocation and his very masculinist vision, and Mike Tyson (58 years old), boxing legend. Despite immense communication and a predictable audience record, Netflix has not managed to offer stable live streaming to everyone.

Netflix claims its audience record. // Source: X

Between 60 and 65 million viewers: Netflix broke everything

According to Netflix, 60 million households watched the match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson worldwide, which is its all-time high. The company even speaks of a peak of 65 million viewers, which has nothing to envy of the biggest television events. The media stunt is successful.

In its self-congratulatory tweet, Netflix also expresses its self-criticism. “The boxing mega-event dominated social media, shattered records and even strained our buffer systems”writes the streaming giant, which undoubtedly anticipated insults in the comments. Just look at the responses to this tweet to see the extent of the problem.

Internet users have risen against Netflix, which has again experienced broadcasting problems. // Source: X

On social networks, many Internet users criticize Netflix servers. The quality was poor, there were loading problems, some strange things were shown (like Mike Tyson's bare butt)… Bloomberg also indicates that 100,000 people reported problems on Netflix during the match on Downdetector . In short, Netflix still had direct problems.

Netflix acknowledges internal problems

With 60 million viewers, can Netflix still consider this fight a success? Unlike Amazon or Disney+, it still fails to excel in the art of live-streaming. This is a problem for such a powerful service, which remains limited to VOD (video on demand), whereas it could dethrone television with more stable servers.

In a note shared internally, Elizabeth Stone, the CTO of Netflix, returns to the famous bugs: “This unprecedented scale created numerous technical challenges, which the team met brilliantly by prioritizing the stability of the stream for the majority of viewers. I'm sure many of you have seen the chatter in the press and on social media about quality issues. We don't want to ignore the bad experience of some of our subscribers, and we know we can still improve, but we still consider this event a huge success.”she writes. Without denying the problems, Neftlix minimizes them in its official communication.

The CTO of Netflix reacted to criticism of the quality of live streaming. // Source: Threads

On December 25, Netflix plans to broadcast two NFL games live. With an influx undoubtedly lower than the Paul/Tyson duel, the company must offer an experience worthy of the competitors. Otherwise, it will likely be a failure.