Netflix Loses In Technical Knock-Out

At least Mike Tyson stayed up for the duration. That’s a lot more than Netflix can say.

Last night, then 58-year-old former boxing great stepped back into the ring against 27-year-old Jake Paul, the headline bout on what turned into a lengthy card and an even longer experience for viewers. Having a subscription already, I attempted to tune in at times, only to get the “25%” spinning wheel every time. I finally gave up on it after a few attempts and instead watched On Patrol Live and a couple of YouTube body-cam videos.

It turned out that my choices had more fight in them than the Tyson-Paul bout. Jason Gay hung in there for the Wall Street Journal, and sounds as though he wished he hadn’t:

I don’t know if you watched it. If you skipped it, good for you. I assume you read classic poetry until drifting off and waking up this morning for 90 minutes of vigorous sunrise yoga. You may live the rest of your life feeling superior, knowing you didn’t fall prey to the marketing of this daffy, deeply unnecessary boxing match.

If you tried to watch it, and you weren’t able to, because of technical chaos and buffering standstills with the Netflix stream—instead of writing an angry letter to the clearly overburdened IT department, you might want to thank them for sparing your eyeballs, and perhaps, your soul.  

As for the rest of us: what were we thinking? Actually, I know what we were thinking: this seems like a terrible idea—58-year-old Mike Tyson entering the ring against a beefy 27-year-old social media imp. Surely I have better things to do with my time.

And yet there we were, watching at an uncommon hour, as many millions surely did, as if history hasn’t repeatedly shown that well-intentioned humans are often capable of making the same, regrettable decision.

Of course they are. They also tune in to watch the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium in Arlington Texas, the venue for this fight. At least those games have some promise of drama, though. Tyson hasn’t fought in nineteen years prior to last night, which is still more recent than the Cowboys’ last division-round playoff win (1995). What did anyone expect from a fight between a 27-year-old current champion and a long-retired has-been? 

A lot, apparently. Enough people tuned into the stream to knock it out, which is more than either boxer could do in the ring. The New York Times reports that “tens of thousands of Netflix users” complained about the stream, but that was just those on Twitter/X. Did anyone see the fight without interruption?

Tens of thousands of Netflix users reported that the service was not working for them ahead of a fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul on Friday, with many saying that the livestream was failing to load.

The keyword #NetflixCrash was trending on the social media platform X in the United States on Friday night as Downdetector, which tracks user reports of internet disruptions, received more than 500,000 reports that people were having problems streaming on Netflix.

On that scale, it’s pretty clear that the streaming failures were universal. That’s absurd for an event that got as much investment as this stunt bout did. Gay reports that Tyson got $20 million from Netflix and the other promoters involved, and Paul got twice as much. Tyson landed a grand total of 18 punches in the 16-minute bout, while Paul landed 78, almost all of them jabs. That’s $625,000 per landed punch, for all you green-visored drones in Accounting.

With purses that size, Netflix and the promoters clearly anticipated enough profits and viewers to make this profitable. Netflix promoted the event constantly on its service to make this a must-watch event — and they succeeded. And yet, Netflix’s server farm apparently got $20 and three extra hamsters for the spinning wheels providing the bandwidth. 

Anybody else’s @netflix service crashing constantly during #PaulTyson pic.twitter.com/jfw4KmMKVs

— Yared Vazquez, M.D. (Octagon Doctor) (@dryared) November 16, 2024

This lack of infrastructure investment for an event as heavily promoted as this is inexcusable. Netflix shelled out tens of millions for what turned out to be Dancing With the Boxing Stars and did nothing to ensure its subscribers could watch the routines. Will those viewers trust Netflix to provide a stable streaming experience for their next live event after this? Will they trust Netflix to provide a stable streaming experience for any service after this, or start looking for that from their competition?

Paul got a unanimous win on points last night. Netflix suffered a technical knock-out, both in the event and to its credibility.