I know that X blew up with angry tweets. I know Facebook was full of memes. But I also know that despite the blowback caused by technical problems stemming from over 60 million concurrent streams worldwide, Netflix will come out a winner as a result of the bout between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul.
Doesn’t this portend problems for its NFL streams?
That depends on a number of questions that had better be asked and answered between then and now. For instance, at what point does Netflix run into problems delivering the signal? Is it at 10 million streams at one time? 30, 20 million? Netflix struggled under the weight of 60 million plus streams at the same time, but on the other hand, NBC Sunday Night football is averaging 20 million viewers per game. And that is a prime-time game that has been a staple on NBC for years now.
Those numbers are not typical for regular season NFL games
Amazon averages 13 million viewers per week with its Thursday Night football stream. And with the busy nature of Christmas day there could well be even fewer people interested in the first NFL games streaming on Netflix. There is no tradition of NFL football on Christmas like the long-running Thanksgiving tradition. So as long as Netflix can handle streaming in the 10 -15 million concurrent streams level (depending on whether the games are competitive) there should be no major problems.
The fight was a worldwide cultural moment
It may well turn out that the fight last weekend was as they say on “Dr Who” a fixed moment in time. For a few hours, people all-over the world were watching the same thing at the same time on a service where most people pick and choose when to watch.
It was kind of amazing thinking that I was watching with my daughter at 11:00 pm while there were people watching in England and Brazil and many other countries at the same time. You really don’t get TV moments like that in today’s media climate. Not since the days of 3 major broadcast networks have that many eyes been on one TV program aside from the Super Bowl. For instance, 105.97 people watched the finale of MASH in 1983. In 1998, after the advent of cable 76 million watched the finale of Seinfield. In a world full of streaming options 13.6 million watched the finale of Game Of Thrones live. So those kinds of numbers for Netflix while not totally unpredictable given the interest in seeing Tyson try and turn back the clock aside, are probably not what people should expect going forward. Netflix on the other hand should not be considered as the exclusive home of say The Super Bowl or World Cup.
It had everybody talking
Lots of people saw the event and talked about it during the action and afterward. It made Netflix the center of the pop culture world for a night. There were people who never watch sports who watched. There were kids who never watch boxing tuning in to see if someone would shut up Jake Paul, there were Gen Xers watching out of nostalgia for their youth when Tyson was so important to boxing he graced the cover of magazines, video games and more and rose to a mythical place in their minds. And it was all on Netflix. It showed the power of a TV channel that does not have geographical borders. Nothing is ever seen all over the world on one medium like that. Even things like the Olympics which are seen in multiple places have multiple rights holders and distributors even emphasizing different events. Sorry not everyone in the world cares if the US women’s gymnastics team wins team gold.
Netflix will learn
Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. I’m sure Netflix will adopt that sort of stance. And in the future, it will probably make adjustments the next time it hosts an event with the potential audience that approaches the one who crashed the fight. Netflix is right to push itself into the world of can’t-miss live events. It will help it differentiate itself in the marketplace and give its 120 million plus subscribers a reason to hold on the service. Exclusive programming is key for streaming services and exclusive live sports programming will be premium real estate going forward.
