Netflix hit a peak of “65 million concurrent streams” during the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match, according to Most Valuable Promotions, the fight’s promoter. These streams reached 60 million households globally, as detailed in a press release. This viewership number is more than double what Netflix saw for its Christmas Day NFL stream this year, assuming the same audience from last year tuned in.
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However, the massive influx of viewers appeared to overwhelm Netflix’s servers, leading to widespread complaints about stream quality. Many users reported issues with blurry video, buffering, and dropped connections. Downdetector recorded over 100,000 reports of Netflix streaming problems during the event, according to Bloomberg.
This is still an impressive number of concurrent streams for a single live event. For context, Disney Plus Hotstar streamed 59 million concurrent views of a World Cup cricket match last year, hitting similar numbers a few days earlier and again in June.
In response to the surge in traffic, Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone told employees that the company managed the “unprecedented scale” by focusing on maintaining stability for the majority of viewers, as reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Stone acknowledged the issues some users faced, but still called the event a “huge success,” emphasizing that Netflix sees room for improvement while recognizing the scale of the achievement.
