Netflix has been hyping up the Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul boxing match for months as one of the biggest streaming events in the company’s history. But if tonight’s performance is any indication of what Netflix’s sports streaming will look like, then the company is in trouble. From the start, the live stream has been hit with severe technical glitches, loss of sound, and very slow feeds during reload attempts.
The only good news so far is that Netflix hasn’t completely crashed. The glitch-filled performance suggests that Netflix successfully drew a large audience to stream the fight. But this isn’t the first time that Netflix’s streaming capabilities have been severely strained during a live broadcast. Fans on social media have been extremely vocal with their displeasure.
Things are going bad to worse. #netflix #tysonpaul pic.twitter.com/sjJutpr1Zq
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) November 16, 2024
As of the writing of this post, the main event hasn’t started. So there’s still a chance that Netflix can salvage the broadcast if the Tyson versus Paul bout isn’t interrupted by any of these technical problems. But given the way that the evening has already gone, that seems unlikely.
This calls into question Netflix’s ability to pivot to live sports, including this year’s NFL Christmas games. And while WWE wrestling is not a sport, Netflix has also committed a large amount of money to begin streaming WWE Raw beginning in January 2025. That “sports entertainment” broadcast is regularly two to three hours long, and doesn’t have these kinds of problems on USA Network. If Netflix can’t figure out its live-streaming issues before Raw premieres, then the backlash from tonight’s Paul versus Tyson fight will pale in comparison.