Jake Paul’s fight against Mike Tyson wasn’t a very good boxing match, or a very well-handled boxing match, but it was a very well-viewed boxing match.
The day after the YouTuber’s unanimous decision win over the 58-year-old former heavyweight champion, Netflix announced its stream of the fight drew 60 million households worldwide and peaked at 65 million concurrent streams.
The co-main event of the card, Katie Taylor’s controversial win in a rematch against Amanda Serrano, also received nearly 50 million households.
60 million households around the world tuned in live to watch Paul vs. Tyson!
The boxing mega-event dominated social media, shattered records, and even had our buffering systems on the ropes. pic.twitter.com/kA8LjfAJSk
— Netflix (@netflix) November 16, 2024
Paul himself claimed over 120 million people tuned in for the fight during his victory interview, noting “We crashed the site.”
By the standards of both boxing and sports streaming, those are astounding numbers. As a comparison, the conference championship games in last year’s NFL playoffs both drew an average of approximately 55 million viewers in the U.S. Getting more than halfway to 100 million viewers is unheard of in the modern world of combat sports.
Those numbers match the viewership of every game of the 2024 NBA Finals. Combined. The Boston Celtics’ five-game defeat of the Dallas Mavericks drew a total average viewership of 56.6 million viewers on ABC.
Of course, all of that’s why Netflix paid up to get this fight.
Netflix got the numbers it wanted from Paul-Tyson, while its audience got buffering screens
Paul has still provided zero reason to be taken seriously as a title contender, but his ability to draw viewers, whether they like him or not, surpasses any champion. Add in Tyson, once the most-feared boxer on the planet and still a significant cultural figure, and the curiosity around the bout was at a fever pitch.
Tyson even helped their cause by slapping Paul at the weigh-ins and drawing widespread headlines the day before the fight.
However, the success of the fight might not have been entirely beneficial for both Paul and Netflix. Viewers across social media reported massive buffering issues while attempting to watch the fight, either venting their frustrations or mocking the absurdity of the situation. The issues were so bad that former NFL player Antonio Brown drew more than 6 million viewers just by streaming video of the fight on Instagram.
Those issues are a significant concern for Netflix, which is preparing to dive into the world of live sports with deals to air Christmas NFL games and WWE Raw. Those events might not match what happened Friday from a viewership standpoint, but it’s hard to see the audience stomaching a repeat technical performance.
Meanwhile, Paul’s win was frankly sad at times, with Tyson looking a shell of himself and unable to even touch a fighter half his age. Not many people were impressed by what they saw, and the scene reinforced that Paul’s boxing career is built more on entertainment than competition.
