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Netflix says 60 million households tuned in for the streamer's live coverage of the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul bout. But a good chunk of them said the experience was lackluster as Netflix preps to stream two NFL games on Christmas Day.
Hordes of Netflix subs complained about the streamer's lackluster performance when it tried (and sometimes failed) to live-stream the bout between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul on Friday night (November 15). As of Monday afternoon, Netflix still hasn't said why it struggled to deliver the event.
Netflix boasted that about 60 million households tuned in to catch Friday night's live stream of the farce-of-a-bout between former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson and YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul at AT&T Stadium. Netflix said its coverage peaked at 65 million concurrent streams.
What the steaming giant did not share is how many of them had a horrendous experience due to technical issues that caused buffering and stuttering and low quality, pixelated video before and during the match. The latter caused some to jokingly liken the look to Tyson's digital appearance in the "Punch-Out!!" game for the old Nintendo NES console.
But the surge of complaints on social media showed that unhappy viewers were out there in droves. Netflix even got some ribbing from Peacock, which fared better when it provided the exclusive live stream of last year's playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins that drew an average audience of about 23 million viewers.
I was not among the flock of complainers. I kept an intermittent eye on the bout via my smartphone as a passenger in a car zipping down I-25 Friday night. Netflix's stream seemed relatively stable every time I dropped in to see how the fight was proceeding. It looked passable on such a small screen.
Former Hulu and Amazon exec Ben Smith said on LinkedIn that he also did not experience some of the technical glitches that others experienced on Friday night. But he did find issues with the overall quality of the production, including "poor" B-roll footage, editing and "bad audio mixing."
"Overall, it felt like amateur hour, unfortunately. I expected so much more in what was really a dress rehearsal," Smith wrote.
Quickplay CTO Juan Martin smartly did not try to guess what exactly went wrong for Netflix on Friday night, but noted in this blog post that Netflix is working to adapt a VoD architecture to one that can also support live streaming. "As they evolve the platform, issues may only become apparent until the platform is under stress," Martin explained, noting that past live events on Netflix, such as the "Love is Blind" reunion show, ran into problems due to a "software bug that went undetected."
More details about Netflix's live-streaming snafus are sure to surface. But for the moment Netflix is calling the night a "huge success" despite "many technical challenges" – or at least that's how the company is characterizing it internally.
"This unprecedented scale created many technical challenges, which the launch team tackled brilliantly by prioritizing stability of the stream for the majority of viewers," Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone reportedly said in a note to employees. "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."
Netflix's very public poor performance didn't do much damage to the company's stock. It closed up $23.09 (+2.80%) to $847.05 per share on Monday.
Netflix shares weather the storm
"Wall Street doesn't seem to care about Netflix's issues with the boxing stream," streaming media expert/analyst Dan Rayburn pointed out.
"How many of the 65 million streams had problems? Netflix made no reference to any user issues in the release, which isn't a good look," he added in a separate LinkedIn post. "Maybe they will address it this week, but if they don't and just pretend it didn't exist, they will lose a lot of credibility in the market."
But the NFL (and the WWE, for that matter) should be mortified about Netflix's performance on Friday night. They should hope that Netflix will be able to bridge the gap in a big damn hurry. After all, Netflix's next big test is Christmas Day, when it will provide live coverage of two NFL games – the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers at 1 p.m. ET, and the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Houston Texans at 4:30 p.m. ET. Viewership of those games likely won't match that of the Paul-Tyson bout, but the NFL games will still be a draw.
Next month's pair of games are part of a three-year deal in which Netflix will live-stream NFL games on Christmas day. So, it's too late for the NFL to call an audible.
"We feel very ready and excited for the NFL on Christmas," Bela Bajaria, Netflix's content chief, said, as the Wall Street Journal's Joe Flint reported on X.
"Very ready" sounds like wishful thinking after Netflix's performance on Friday night.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with commentary from Quickplay CTO Juan Martin
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