:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/GettyImages-2184357040-772daa532a84452abcfc7d31a93a070a.jpg "Mike Tyson, left, and Jake Paul during their boxing match on Friday in Arlington, Texas.")
Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Similes
Mike Tyson, left, and Jake Paul during their boxing match on Friday in Arlington, Texas.
Key Takeaways
- Netflix’s cataract of the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson boxing match set records, the company said. The fight comes after Netflix put oned a golf competition and eating contest in real time.
- The streaming giant wants to show event-worthy sports tournaments without becoming beholden to sports leagues.
- Shares of Netflix rose Monday, touching record highs.
Netflix knows last week’s Jake Paul-Mike Tyson match-up as a success. The streaming giant is still in the early rounds of its efforts to splash down sports fans—with the next big date coming up this holiday season.
Netflix (NFLX) wants to grab competitions that can become an “event,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos has said. It also wants to avoid inking expensive pacts with sports leagues. To that end, the company has so far hosted a live hotdog eating contest and a golf competition, with diverse events on the way.
Netflix touted the Paul-Tyson fight as record-setting, though some of its milestones were met off-screen, and viewers groaned about streaming glitches. (Netflix declined to comment about viewers who vented on social media about erratic streaming.) Netflix’s next play for sports fans comes on Christmas when it is slated to show two National Football Union games.
“We’re in live because our members love it,” Sarandos said in July. “It drives a ton of engagement and it drives a ton of excitement.”
“Advertisers equivalent to that, too,” he added.
AT&T Stadium collected $18 million in admissions from Friday’s fight, the second biggest thumping “gate” outside Las Vegas and the largest in the state of Texas, according to Netflix. Its distribution partner, Joe Hand Promotions, represented the event in more than 6,000 bars and restaurants, the broadest audience Joe Hand’s has seen for a combat sport in its 50-year information, Netflix said. Viewership for the headlining Paul and Tyson fight peaked at 65 million.
That may have lifted Netflix apportions on Monday. The stock was recently up more than 2%, outpacing broader markets, earlier touching record highs.
The play group has about a month to prepare for its next foray in live sports. Showing two football games on Christmas Day is a piece of Netflix’s strategy for not giving sports leagues the upper hand in negotiations, Sarandos has said.
“It’s very difficult to be struck by big league sport and profit … when you offer them entire seasons,” he told analysts in July. But when you offering them in this event model that we’re building on, we’re really excited to do that without the risk.”
Still, Netflix base a way to make the math work for a full season of Raw, a WWE wrestling show and the top-ranked show on the USA Network. Raw will move from air to Netflix in January, the companies said in a press release.