Netflix had a record-breaking night due to the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match. Netflix had a whopping 60 million households tune in that very night. This fight had been hyped up immensely ever since Mike Tyson had to postpone it due to health issues. While the main event (Paul vs. Tyson) may seem like it received all the attention, it did not. The women’s boxing match (Katie Taylor v.s. Amanda Serrano) had 50 million streams. In my opinion, the Katie vs. Serrano fight was way more entertaining than the main event due to more action taking place.
While this may sound like a great accomplishment for Netflix, there were many problems with the streaming service. This was actually the first time Netflix has ever done a livestream. There was constant buffering on the livestream that made it unbearable to watch. According to LIVENOW Fox News, “…nearly 85,000 viewers logged problems with outages or streaming leading up to the fight.” I happened to be one of those viewers with issues and it was awful. I was trying to refresh every second and it would still load for minutes on end. At some point before the main event it loaded, but the quality was awfully blurry.
Netflix has a total of 280 million subscribers who were able to access this live stream for free. For such a huge company, I am shocked that these issues occurred.
With many viewers already enraged by the buffering issues, they were even more upset when the fight ended up being so anti-climatic. There were no crazy moments, unlike the Katie vs. Serrano fight where Serrano got head-butted which led to an open gash on her eyebrow.
Tyson only threw 97 punches while Paul threw 278. As well as Tyson only landing 18 while Paul landed 78. Tyson ended up losing the fight due to a weak performance, but there were no serious hits.
Many fans expressed their disappointment through social media about the fight. Most of the conversation was that Jake Paul needs to fight people who aren’t 58+ years old and Netflix needs to be “canceled.” This followed with memes of Jake Paul’s next fight being against Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, or Sylvester Stallone.
It was also mentioned how the fight had to have been staged due to Mike Tyson’s performance not adding up to the videos he’d post on social media of him practicing with tons of energy.
The same night, Netflix announced that they would be hosting 2 NFL games on Christmas Day. Additionally, they also announced that Beyoncé will be performing during halftime of the Ravens vs. Texans game. This is going to be interesting since the buffering issue was so bad and I bet the NFL does not want to take a loss in ratings since a huge celebrity will be performing. Though, the NFL had been reassured recently by Netflix that there won’t be any streaming issues but I would not blame the NFL for being skeptical.
We will all see how this plays out!
