has been experimenting with live sports for the past few months with exhibition tennis events. The company has 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 a number of reasons. Both fighters bring star power to the table. There is a difference of 30 years between them. Despite his 9-1 record, Paul can hardly be described as an elite fighter. Although Tyson is considered one of the greatest heavyweights of all time, he retired 19 years ago and has only fought two matches since then. Paul’s second fight was on the undercard of Tyson’s last fight, which was against Roy Jones Jr. in 2020.
The fight will take place at the 80,000 capacity AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. It’s sure to draw 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 at no extra cost.
Netflix has not released viewership figures for the Netflix Cup (its golf event) or the Netflix Slam (a recent tennis exhibition). Combat sports, however, tend to command high viewership, suggesting that Netflix’s infrastructure will need to handle more simultaneous streams than any of the other live events to date.
The company has dabbled in other live events for the past year or so, including , and a weekly cooking show with David Chang. However, the company has faced issues with live streaming in the past – it was forced to go live The love is blind collection due to technical problems.
Netflix has about nine months to make sure its live-streaming capabilities are in order before launching its most ambitious sports (well, sports-related) project yet. From January, Netflix will be in many markets, including the flagship program Raw in USA.
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