The experience might not have been very pleasant for a lot of viewers, but a whole lot of households spent Friday night on Netflix watching Jake Paul defeat Mike Tyson.
According to Netflix, 60 million households watched the Paul vs. Tyson main event around the world, peaking at 65 million concurrent streams. That’s a lot of people getting a good look at Mike Tyson’s butt.
For content, The Roast of Tom Brady garnered 1.8 concurrent streams during its live broadcast.
Netflix also says that nearly 50 million households worldwide watched the co-main event of Amanda Serrano vs. Katie Taylor, which would make it the most-watched professional women’s sporting event in US history.
The numbers are based on Netflix overnight data and are not Neilsen-rated. They’re all the more impressive when you take into account the massive number of viewers who dealt with buffering and lag issues during the live broadcast. Pirated streams also skimmed quite a few viewers as well, with Antonio Brown’s X stream garnering over 6 million viewers at one point.
While many were disappointed with the fight itself, the event shattered several records. According to Netflix, it was the biggest boxing gate outside of Las Vegas in US history, surpassing $18 million. That’s also double the record for Texas, where the event was held.
As for those technical issues and glitches, Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone told employees that while they have room to improve, the event was a “huge success.”
“This unprecedented scale created many technical challenges, which the launch team tackled brilliantly by prioritizing stability of the stream for the majority of viewers,” said Stone, per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. “I’m sure many of you have seen the chatter in the press and on social media about the quality issues. We don’t want to dismiss the poor experience of some members, and know we have room for improvement, but still consider this event a huge success.”
It’s got to be an interesting day after for the NFL, who is salivating for the chance to put up even bigger numbers than this for their Christmas games but must be sweating the potential broadcasting issues ahead, especially when this isn’t the first time a live Netflix broadcast turned into a glitchfest.
About Sean Keeley
Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.