This Friday night is very tough for the viewers of Netflix because it managed a live sports event first time on its platform.
In this Live sport, they are streaming the most exciting fight between Jake Paul (27), a YouTuber turned prizefighter, and Mike Tyson (58), a former heavyweight boxing champion.
It was scheduled on July 20 but Tyson suffered an ulcer flare-up on an airline flight over the summer, leading him to postpone a fight.
Tyson’s return to the ring had millions of viewers logging into Netflix on a Friday night.
But it is controversial for two reasons. As Netflix said, “The boxing mega-event dominated social media, shattered records, and even had our buffering systems on the ropes”.
First for the showdown between two fighters of course and second for Netflix’s own blunder with streaming service.
Netflix has a total of 280 million subscribers worldwide. They expect 60 million households to tune in live to watch the showdown between two giants, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
But the company’s first foray into streaming a live sports event wasn’t seamless. Netflix faced several outages, logged problems, buffering, and streaming quality issues.
According to third-party sources like Nielsen and Down Detector, more than 85,000 viewers faced logged problems with outages or streaming issues leading up to the fight.
After the game, the results were not appreciated by fans, and thought it was purely scripted. Jake Paul won the game and Mike Tyson did not even go through the 9th round. Mike Tyson returned after nearly two decades and got highly anticipated favoritism.
But the decision was unanimous and people can’t get over the results. The 27-year-old Paul defeated the 58-year-old Tyson by unanimous decision after the two fighters went eight full rounds, with each round two minutes long.
Paul will get $40 million as the winner price while Tyson will get $20 million for his game appearance and runner up of the game.
meanwhile, Tyson and Paul expressed thanks a day later.
After the fight, Tyson wrote on social media, “This is one of those situations when you lost but still won. I’m grateful for last night. No regrets about getting in the ring one last time. I almost died in June. Had 8 blood transfusions. Lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy too so I won.”
Paul thanked Tyson for taking the fight.
“Thank you to every fighter on the card last night, thank u Netflix, thank u to Jerry Jones, thank u to my MVP team, thank u to the legend Mike Tyson for giving me a chance to share the ring with him, thank u to my family and close circle of friends..and above all, thank you God.”
While the Taylor-Serrano showdown proved the fight of the night, because 50 million households globally watched the co-main event. It would make the fight the most-watched professional women’s sporting event in United States history.
Katie Taylor retains her undisputed women’s lightweight championship with a controversial unanimous decision over Amanda Serrano.
In the 3rd fight, Neeraj Goyat from India won the game and maybe his future ring battled with Jake Paul.