Days after Netflix drew 60 million viewers for Jake Paul’s defeat of Mike Tyson in a boxing match—as well as numerous complaints about the company’s stream—leaders have turned their attention to Netflix’s next chance to prove itself as a sports streaming go-to.
On Christmas Day, the service will air back-to-back games: the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers at 1 p.m. ET and the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Houston Texans at 4:30 p.m. ET. Beyoncé will perform at halftime of the second contest, drawing in dedicated fans and potentially causing a sudden spike in viewers, which can present technical challenges. The biggest question now is whether Netflix’s servers can perform that day, too.
“We feel very ready and excited for the NFL on Christmas,” Netflix content chief Bela Bajaria said Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Outage tracking website Downdetector.com noted a peak of 90,000 reported issues as fans attempted to tune into Paul and Tyson’s bout on Friday night. While Paul celebrated the deluge—“We crashed the site,” he yelled from the ring—others weren’t as celebratory. Viewers complained of low quality feeds, sudden pauses and stream failures.
Longtime broadcaster Dan Patrick called the production “unprofessional,” while Fox’s NFL pregame show made fun of Netflix’s frequent buffering issues on Sunday. “So how was everyone’s night? :),” Peacock’s official X account posted; that service largely held up during January’s record-breaking exclusive stream of an NFL playoff game.
It’s far from unheard of for streaming services to struggle during the biggest moments of large live events, as the infrastructure required differs significantly from the processes used for on-demand content distribution. Companies dedicate months of testing to avoid pitfalls, yet few escape a massive viewership spike without encountering unwanted surprises.
“This unprecedented scale created many technical challenges, which the launch team tackled brilliantly by prioritizing stability of the stream for the majority of viewers,” Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone wrote in an internal memo following the Paul-Tyson fight, according to a Bloomberg reporter. “We don’t want to dismiss the poor experience of some members, and know we have room for improvement, but still consider this event a huge success.”
While Friday’s lapses likely sparked conversations at NFL headquarters, the league has long been excited about the potential upside of streaming two marquee games with a new broadcast partner that can reach nearly 300 million subscribers worldwide. Last year, the Netflix show Quarterback racked up more than 81 million viewing hours from July to December. Netflix is reportedly paying the league $150 million for rights to the two games, which will also air on traditional TV in teams’ local markets.
Netflix has brought in CBS Sports to manage aspects of the game productions, though it will be the streaming company ultimately held responsible for delivering the viewing experience. In some regards, the less global nature of American football compared to boxing could make managing gameday issues more straightforward, though the concentration of viewers stateside could also trigger problems. Christmas Day traditionally sees fewer internet users; however, owners of new computers and digital devices have been known to swamp services as they download updates for their gifts or install apps and games.
Last year’s three Christmas games averaged 28.7 million U.S. viewers across CBS (and Nickelodeon), Fox and ABC, up 30% from 2022. The NFL made the unusual move of scheduling two games on Christmas this year even though the holiday falls on a Wednesday. The league has only had two Wednesday games since 1948.
Investors appear to have shrugged off the streaming hiccups, with Netflix stock up more than 2% on Monday.
In a public note, Oppenheimer head of internet research Jason Helfstein estimated that Friday’s live viewership was roughly twice what Netflix was expecting, contributing to the issues—“a high quality problem [that] can be easily fixed by Christmas Day.”
A Netflix representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
