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The much-hyped fight between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson was disappointing for a bounty of reasons. Tyson, 58, very much looked like a man who was 58 years old and had not been in a professional fight for years. Paul, meanwhile, seemingly cruised to a decision victory, which he claims was out of respect for Tyson.
But perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the entire ordeal was the quality of the stream. The event was produced and streamed by Netflix. Because it was not behind an additional paywall, some 65 million viewers tuned in at its peak, making it one of the most-watched fights in history. But nearly 90,000 people complained about the stream going down at some point according to DownDetector.com.
That number is worrisome even without context. But it gets even worse when you consider that both the NFL and WWE have recently signed contracts to stream their products using Netflix.
Netflix And Industry Execs Brush Off Streaming Issues During Paul-Tyson Fight
However, rather than looking in the mirror and making a big fix, Netflix appears entirely unconcerned with the issues according to Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal.
“While the press will focus on the technical bandwidth issues and customer complaints, our guess is that viewing was likely ~2x internal expectations, a high-quality problem than can be easily fixed by Christmas Day,” Oppenheimer head of internal research Jason Helfstein said according to Stern.
On one hand, it’s encouraging that it seems like an easily fixable issue. But on the other, it doesn’t seem as if Netflix is treating the issue with the severity it should. A very large chunk of the viewing audience either couldn’t watch at all or turned off the stream due to the issues.
Ultimately, entities with as much financial might and as big reputations as the NFL and WWE will almost guarantee whatever the issue is gets fixed. But you’d like to have Netflix show a little more care for its consumers.