Record broken! The boxing fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, broadcast live on Netflix last Friday, attracted some 108 million viewers worldwide, the platform announced. According to Netflix, this makes this clash “the most streamed global sporting event in history”.
The fight generated an estimated average audience of 108 million viewers per minute (AMA) globally, with a peak of 65 million simultaneous streams, including 38 million in the United States. The event topped the Netflix chart during the week, reaching 46.6 million views through Sunday evening. To put that into perspective, 210 million people watched this year’s Super Bowl. In its press release, Netflix also revealed that the fight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano, the other headliner of the evening, had reached an average of 74 million viewers worldwide. Another record since this makes it the most watched women’s sporting event in history in the United States.
Audience record and serial hiccups
Beyond these audience records, the broadcast of the event was marred by technical problems. Many users have reported issues with buffering, latency, and buffering (a buffering issue that results in choppy images) during the broadcast, which seriously affected the viewer experience. A customer user of the platform even attacked Netflix based on a poor experience. These technical issues are nothing new for Netflix, which has encountered similar difficulties during its previous live events, including the “Love is blind” special, which was only able to be seen live by a small number of subscribers before becoming fully accessible until the next day.
There are therefore still some technical details to be resolved by the streaming platform. And quickly… Because Netflix plans to broadcast two NFL games at Christmas, in just over a month. Managing viewership and stream quality is expected to be crucial to maintaining Netflix’s attractiveness in the live sports sector – a sector in which it is increasingly investing.
