NFL fans worry Netflix’s bad Tyson vs. Paul stream means it can’t handle football

Netflix’s livestream of the Mike Tyson and Jake Paul boxing match was a mess. I’m not talking about the bout itself — although people had their qualms with that, too — it’s the livestream, which people across the internet complained was plagued by buffering, unstable, and unwatchable muddiness. That doesn’t bode well for Netflix’s live sports ambitions, especially its upcoming Christmas Day NFL games.

I had the same experience, having tuned in a few minutes before Paul showed up in the back of a lowrider truck. For the vast majority of the 8-round match, I had to lean heavily on my brain’s ability to construct a cohesive picture from very little information to have an idea of what was going on. The X post below was very much what the fight looked like for me, and there are plenty of others like it.

Netflix didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment, and hasn’t said how many people tuned in last night, but it was available to all of the streaming giant’s 283 million subscribers.

Fans, like those posting below, worry that last night’s quality issues don’t bode well for its upcoming broadcasts of WWE Raw, which 1.4 million people watch every week, nor for its NFL matchups on Christmas Day, one of which will feature this year’s Superbowl winner, the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs drew almost 30 million viewers on Christmas Day last year and have topped NFL broadcast ratings with similar numbers throughout this season.

Will Netflix pull off its December NFL streams as well as Peacock did the Superbowl this year? Or will it be more like YouTube’s NFL Sunday Ticket stream in late December last year? We’ll see, but after last night, it seems like the company needs to fix some things.