Friday night’s fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul naturally hit the world hard.
Streaming giant Netflix said Saturday that 60 million households tuned in to see Paul, a 27-year-old YouTuber turned professional boxer, fight former heavyweight champion Tyson, 58, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The match’s highest concurrent viewership reached 65 million.
Additionally, Netflix announced that the co-main event, in which Katie Taylor retained the undisputed title with a controversial unanimous decision over Amanda Serrano, was watched by 50 million households worldwide. According to Netflix, that number could make the game the most-watched professional women’s sport in American history.
Netflix said it will release more details in the coming days, including total viewership. Netflix has 280 million subscribers worldwide.
Traditional ratings are usually compiled by third-party sources such as Nielsen. The card marked the company’s first foray into live sports, but it didn’t go smoothly.
Nearly 85,000 viewers recorded outages or streaming issues before the game, according to the Down Detector website, prompting many viewers to take to social media Friday night to vent their frustrations. “The boxing event dominated social media, broke records and even strained our bumper system,” Netflix said on Saturday.
While Taylor’s showdown with Serrano proved to be the headline fight of the night, Tyson’s return to the ring on Friday night had millions of viewers tuning into Netflix. A day later, Tyson and Paul expressed their gratitude.
“This is one of those situations where you lose but still win,” Tyson wrote on social media. “I’m grateful for last night. I don’t regret boxing for the last time.” I almost died in June. Already 8 blood transfusions. I lost half my blood and 25 pounds in the hospital and had to regain my health to continue the fight, so I won.
“For my kids to see me go eight rounds with a talented fighter half my age in a packed Dallas Cowboys Stadium is an experience no one could ask for. Thank you. This summer, Tyson suffered a flare-up on a flight, which led to him postponing his planned July 20 fight.
Paul thanked Tyson for participating in the contest. “Thank you to every fighter yesterday, thank you to Netflix, thank you to Jerry Jones, thank you to my MVP team, thank you to the legendary Mike Tyson for the opportunity to share the ring with him, thank you to my family and inner circle… Most of all, thank you to God,” he wrote.
Netflix will air two NFL games on Christmas Day and will begin streaming WWE “Raw” on Jan. 12. 6.
Nielsen said that in last season’s Super Bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime. The average audience across television and streaming platforms was 123.7 million, making it the highest-rated game in television history.
Tyson has thrown just 18 punches in eight two-minute contests, including just six in his last five, while his opponent has thrown 78. Wearing a compression sleeve on his right knee, he appeared exhausted after the first round and his movements were visibly hampered, allowing the 27-year-old Paul to score with random outside punches. “I love Mike Tyson, but [commentators] give him too much credit,” wrote four-weight champion Terence Crawford. “He looked like garbage, practiced for so long and only threw 97 pitches the entire game, which is crazy. I’m glad he didn’t get hurt on the field.
The 31-year age gap between boxers is considered the largest in history, surpassing the 24-year age gap in 1963 when Archie Moore and Mike DiBiase met as light heavyweights. Just like a 60-year-old man. “I’m angry with myself for being sane,” wrote J.J. Watt, a former NFL star and minority investor in Burnley Football Club. “I know better.”
In the next rounds, at the home of the $1.2 billion (£951 million) NFL team Dallas Cowboys, Paul released his fists, sensing Tyson was tired and vulnerable, and saved him from the humiliation of elimination while it all seemed ripe. “I want to give the fans a show, but I don’t want to hurt people who don’t need to be hurt,” Paul said.
Criticism isn’t limited to the troubling main event. The seven-race card marks Netflix’s first major draw since last year’s Netflix Cup, a professional golf tournament featuring F1 drivers, and March’s Netflix Grand Slam, where Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal (After the tennis exhibition match in Las Vegas). for the third time to come to live sports events. But Paul and Tyson’s massive popularity and diverse age demographic helped attract a large global audience that overwhelmed the company’s servers, prompting viewers to complain of buffering issues and screen freezes.
The technical issues started in the co-funding bout that saw Katie Taylor score a controversial 10-round unanimous decision victory over Amanda Serrano in the highly anticipated rematch of the 2022 Classic. The crowd-friendly bout was a stark contrast to the lackluster main event, but that wasn’t the case for the nearly 100,000 users who started reporting network issues starting in the middle stages, according to DownDetector.
These problems continued during Tyson vs. Paul fights back, prompting many viewers to turn to X and Bluesky to vent their frustrations, with #NetflixCrash being one of the trending topics.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.