Viewers have been talking about Friday night’s boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, but perhaps not for the reasons Netflix was hoping for.
Yes, 27-year-old Paul (YouTuber turned professional boxer) beat 58-year-old Tyson (former heavyweight champion who retired for this fight) in 8 rounds. But the real headline was the flawed experience. Screen freezes and buffering appear to be common for viewers watching Netflix live.
The #NetflixCrash hashtag was trending on
“This is the biggest event,” declared Paul after the game. “Netflix has over 120 million users. We took the site down.”
Netflix has had trouble with live programming before. Last year, the ‘Love is Blind’ Season 4 reunion was delayed by more than an hour. Since then, the streamer has expanded its live lineup, including demonstration golf, tennis matches, live talk shows, and award ceremonies, without any major issues.
The streamer only releases selective data on viewership, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the fight peaked at 65 million concurrent viewers (compared to 1.8 million concurrent streams for Tom Brady’s live roast). So the Tyson/Paul match was the biggest test of Netflix’s live infrastructure to date.
The streamer now has just over a month to make improvements before broadcasting two NFL games on Christmas Day and WWE Raw in January.
