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At least Mike Tyson stayed up for the duration. That's a lot more than
Netflix can say.

Last night, the 58-year-old former boxing great stepped back into the
ring against 27-year-old Jake Paul, the headline bout on what turned
into a lengthy card and an even longer experience for viewers. Having a
subscription already, I attempted to tune in at times, only to get the
"25%" spinning wheel every time. I finally gave up on it after a few
attempts and instead watched On Patrol Live and a couple of YouTube
body-cam videos.

It turned out that my choices had more fight in them than the
Tyson-Paul bout. Jason Gay [1]hung in there for the Wall Street
Journal, and sounds as though he wished he hadn't:

I don’t know if you watched it. If you skipped it, good for you. I
assume you read classic poetry until drifting off and waking up this
morning for 90 minutes of vigorous sunrise yoga. You may live the
rest of your life feeling superior, knowing you didn’t fall prey to
the marketing of this daffy, deeply unnecessary boxing match.

If you tried to watch it, and you weren’t able to, because of
technical chaos and buffering standstills with the [2]Netflix
stream—instead of writing an angry letter to the clearly
overburdened IT department, you might want to thank them for sparing
your eyeballs, and perhaps, your soul.

As for the rest of us: what were we thinking? Actually, I know what
we were thinking: this seems like a terrible idea—58-year-old Mike
Tyson entering the ring against a beefy 27-year-old social media
imp. Surely I have better things to do with my time.

And yet there we were, watching at an uncommon hour, as many
millions surely did, as if history hasn’t repeatedly shown that
well-intentioned humans are often capable of making the same,
regrettable decision.

Of course they are. They also tune in to watch the Dallas Cowboys at
AT&T Stadium in Arlington Texas, the venue for this fight. At least
those games have some promise of drama, though. Tyson hasn't fought in
nineteen years prior to last night, which is still more recent than the
Cowboys' last division-round playoff win (1995). What did anyone expect
from a fight between a 27-year-old current champion and a long-retired
has-been?

A lot, apparently. Enough people tuned into the stream to knock it out,
which is more than either boxer could do in the ring. [3]The New York
Times reports that "tens of thousands of Netflix users" complained
about the stream, but that was just those on Twitter/X. Did anyone see
the fight without interruption?

Tens of thousands of Netflix users reported that the service was not
working for them ahead of a fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul
on Friday, with many saying that the livestream was failing to load.

The keyword #NetflixCrash was trending on the social media platform
X in the United States on Friday night as Downdetector, which tracks
user reports of internet disruptions, received more than 500,000
reports that people were having problems streaming on Netflix.

On that scale, it's pretty clear that the streaming failures were
universal. That's absurd for an event that got as much investment as
this stunt bout did. Gay reports that Tyson got $20 million from
Netflix and the other promoters involved, and Paul got twice as much.
Tyson landed a grand total of 18 punches in the 16-minute bout, while
Paul landed 78, almost all of them jabs. That's $625,000 per landed
punch, for all you green-visored drones in Accounting.

With purses that size, Netflix and the promoters clearly anticipated
enough profits and viewers to make this profitable. Netflix promoted
the event constantly on its service to make this a must-watch event --
and they succeeded. And yet, Netflix's server farm apparently got $20
and three extra hamsters for the spinning wheels providing the
bandwidth.

Anybody else's [4]@netflix service crashing constantly during
[5]#PaulTyson [6]pic.twitter.com/jfw4KmMKVs
— Yared Vazquez, M.D. (Octagon Doctor) (@dryared) [7]November 16,
2024

This lack of infrastructure investment for an event as heavily promoted
as this is inexcusable. Netflix shelled out tens of millions for what
turned out to be Dancing With the Boxing Stars and did nothing to
ensure its subscribers could watch the routines. Will those viewers
trust Netflix to provide a stable streaming experience for their next
live event after this? Will they trust Netflix to provide a stable
streaming experience for any service after this, or start looking for
that from their competition?

Paul got a unanimous win on points last night. Netflix suffered a
technical knock-out, both in the event and to its credibility.