has been experimenting with live sports over the past few months with tennis exhibition events. The company have the biggest test of its live streaming capabilities to date: a boxing match between YouTuber (and professional boxer) Jake Paul and former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.
The fight will be a spectacle for several reasons. Both fighters bring star power to the table. There is a 30 year age difference between them. Despite his 9-1 record, Paul can hardly be described as an elite fighter. While Tyson is considered one of the greatest heavyweights of all time, he retired 19 years ago and has only fought in two bouts since then. Paul's second fight was on the undercard of Tyson's last fight, which was against Roy Jones Jr. in 2020.
The battle will take place at the 80,000-seat AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. It will surely attract a decent audience through Netflix as well. Most major boxing matches are pay-per-view, but Netflix's 260 million subscribers will be able to watch them at no additional cost.
Netflix has not released viewing figures for the Netflix Cup (its golf event) or the Netflix Slam (a recent tennis exhibition). However, combat sports tend to generate high viewership, suggesting that Netflix's infrastructure will have to handle more simultaneous streams than any of its other live events so far.
The company has ventured into other live events over the past year, including a television show and a weekly cooking show with David Chang. However, the company has faced issues with livestreams in the past: it was forced to go live. Love is blind meeting due to technical problems.
Netflix has about nine months to make sure its live streaming capabilities are in order before embarking on its most ambitious sports (well, sports-adjacent) project yet. Starting in January, Netflix will be in many markets, including the flagship show. Raw In the USA.
