Friday night saw one of the most highly-anticipated boxing events in history unfold in front of 72,000 fans at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
With seven fights on the card, two co-main events, and the in-ring return of a boxing legend (with the promise that he could KO a YouTuber), then it’s no surprise that people poured into the stadium.
However, the event was also available to stream for Netflix users across the globe.
Fans watched as Katie Taylor successfully defended her undisputed super lightweight championship against Amanda Serrano (albeit, in controversial fashion), and the night was topped off by 58-year-old Mike Tyson stepping back between the ropes against 27-year-old Jake Paul.
Now, disregarding the quality of the final fight, to see “Iron” Mike fighting his first professional boxing match in 19 years wasn’t just special, it was history in the making.
And viewers knew this.
In fact, Netflix have now announced that, “the boxing mega-event dominated social media, shattered records, and even had our buffering systems on the ropes”, in a tweet shared on Saturday (November 16),
The streaming giant then announced that a whopping “60 million households around the world tuned in live to watch Paul vs. Tyson”.
This is lower than Jake Paul’s estimated “120 million” that he referred to post-fight, but we’ve got to believe most households had more than one person watching – that that number surely isn’t far off.
Netflix added that 50 million tuned in to watched the co-main event fight between Amanda Serrano and defending champion Katie Taylor, which the platform states means the match is “likely to be the most watched professional women’s sporting event in U.S. history”. A huge accomplishment for women in the sport!
However, as Netflix acknowledged, Friday night certainly didn’t go off without a hitch.
Buffering issues led to many viewers raging on social media, with some X users vowing to cancel their subscriptions altogether.
“Netflix has absolutely no idea how to do a live stream – they lack the proper infrastructure [sic],” one person tweeted. “Months of waiting for this disappointment, can’t even watch the fight. Constant 25% buffering. Canceling my subscription indefinitely.”
“Cancelling my subscription to Netflix because you all dropped the ball,” another tweeted to the platform.
In fact, per the New York Post, Down Detector reported 88,000 streaming problems Friday night.
Ouch. Let’s hope they can do enough to resolve these issues for future events.
