• by Wayne Friedman , November 19, 2024

In a sporting event seeming to rival some of the biggest sporting events, Netflix says the “Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson” boxing event pulled in 108 million global viewers, according to the company.

Netflix says it was “the most-streamed sporting event ever.”

On Monday, Netflix disclosed the Friday night fight pulled 65 million concurrent global household streams -- and 38 million U.S. streams.

The event was plagued by massive buffering/outages, due to the huge and unexpected audience size, according to company executives. Downdetector says there were some 500,000 reports of technical snafus.

The company also says the co-main event fight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano was the most-watched professional women’s sports event in U.S. history -- with an estimated 74 million live viewers globally.

This past February, Super Bowl pulled in a Nielsen-measured 123.7 million U.S. average viewers, per average minute audience on CBS, Univision, Nickelodeon and Nick-At-Nite.

Shares of Netflix have been up 6% over the last five days, closing at $871.32 on Tuesday.

Media analysts were immediately concerned that the technical issues would severely impact the company’s quality/value among consumers as it concerns two major upcoming Christmas Day games Netflix has secured.

The NFL game has been positioned by analysts as a major test for Netflix moving more into more high-profile, high revenue-producing premium sports content.

Sports content is seen as crucial for Netflix in the coming years as it expects advertising revenue to become its primary revenue driver by 2026.