The much-hyped boxing match between 58-year-old legend Mike Tyson and 27-year-old internet star Jake Paul was expected to dominate headlines and draw massive viewership on Netflix. Instead, the event became notable for an entirely different reason: a widespread service outage that left thousands of fans frustrated and unable to tune in.
Technical failures overshadowed what was shaping up to be a milestone moment for Netflix’s debut in live sports streaming, resulting in a significant disruption on Friday night, which left thousands of users unable to access its platform.
The outage began during the undercard bouts leading up to the Tyson-Paul main event, held at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The majority of these complaints centered on buffering, video pixelation, and distorted audio. Some users also reported complete service interruptions and login issues, which persisted well into the evening. In India, a smaller but significant number of users—around 1,200—also reported issues during the fight. Complaints included video streaming failures, app malfunctions, and difficulties accessing Netflix’s website.
Downdetector – the outage tracking website – revealed that nearly 14,000 reports had been made at the peak of the outage. A majority of complaints (86%) were related to video streaming issues, while 10% of users faced problems with server connections. The remaining 4% of users experienced login troubles. In India, 86% of reports were related to issues with video streaming, while 10% and 8% of reports were related to complications with the app and website respectively. The situation is solved now, though, and Netflix noted that it is “not currently experiencing an interruption” in its streaming service.
As is the norm with outages, frustrated users took to social media platforms (mainly X) in order to voice their grievances. The hashtags #NetflixCrash, #Unwatchable, and #NetflixFight quickly trended, with many expressing their disappointment at missing key moments of the fight, even sharing memes mocking Netflix’s technical failures, while others demanded refunds.
Speaking of the Tyson-Paul fight, it was a highly-anticipated one and was set to signal Netflix’s ambitions to expand into live sports and a diversification of its offerings. The streaming service has historically been focused on on-demand movies and TV series and has recently begun experimenting with live content, including unscripted shows and reality television. However, Friday’s technical issues might put a damper on things, especially since it comes at a time when Netflix has announced plans to broadcast additional live sports, including NFL games and WWE events.
