The superfight between Terence “Bud” Crawford and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez was one of the biggest bouts that boxing could put forth in 2025, at least outside of Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. And according to Netflix, it delivered viewers in a huge way.
It was Netflix’s second major foray into boxing as the streaming giant continues with its “eventized” strategy of live sports rights by televising major individual events. Last year, Netflix was home to the curiosity of the century with Mike Tyson stepping into the ring for the first time in decades against YouTuber turned fighter Jake Paul. Even though the fight was a disaster from a sporting perspective, Netflix still claimed over 100 million watched the fight worldwide.
Crawford’s unanimous decision victory over Canelo did not reach those same heights, but it still scored a massive audience according to Netflix.
In a press release, Netflix says that an average of 36.6 million people watched live from bell to bell. A grand total of 41.4 million watched over the weekend, making it the most-watched championship boxing match this century. The caveat for this is that the viewership number isn’t from Nielsen, it’s from VideoAmp and Netflix themselves. And a healthy amount of skepticism already exists when it comes to counting streaming audiences and having independent verification of them.
However, if we take the number at face value, perhaps the most important element is the viewership split between the United States and the rest of the world. Netflix says that 20.3 million viewers watched the fight live in the USA. That’s even considering the preposterous 1 a.m. ET start time for the east coast. However, that means the global audience exceeded domestic numbers at 21.1 million. The fight was the number one event on Netflix in the US, Mexico, UK, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Ireland and the Philippines.
Compare that to another recent global sporting event on streaming – the NFL’s Week 1 game in Brazil on YouTube. The Chiefs-Chargers matchup only drew just over 1 million viewers on YouTube internationally in spite of it being free. That audience pales in comparison to what Netflix drew for Crawford-Canelo. That tells us that either the NFL has a ton of work to do to keep growing internationally (at least outside of Europe) or that Netflix is the go-to platform when it comes to global live sports rights.
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