Posted on 11/16/2024 5:48:54 PM PST by SeekAndFind
At least Mike Tyson stayed up for the duration. That's a lot more than Netflix can say.
Last night, the 58-year-old former boxing great stepped back into the ring against 27-year-old Jake Paul, the headline bout on what turned into a lengthy card and an even longer experience for viewers. Having a subscription already, I attempted to tune in at times, only to get the "25%" spinning wheel every time. I finally gave up on it after a few attempts and instead watched On Patrol Live and a couple of YouTube body-cam videos.
It turned out that my choices had more fight in them than the Tyson-Paul bout. Jason Gay hung in there for the Wall Street Journal, and sounds as though he wished he hadn't:
I don’t know if you watched it. If you skipped it, good for you. I assume you read classic poetry until drifting off and waking up this morning for 90 minutes of vigorous sunrise yoga. You may live the rest of your life feeling superior, knowing you didn’t fall prey to the marketing of this daffy, deeply unnecessary boxing match.
If you tried to watch it, and you weren’t able to, because of technical chaos and buffering standstills with the Netflix stream—instead of writing an angry letter to the clearly overburdened IT department, you might want to thank them for sparing your eyeballs, and perhaps, your soul.
As for the rest of us: what were we thinking? Actually, I know what we were thinking: this seems like a terrible idea—58-year-old Mike Tyson entering the ring against a beefy 27-year-old social media imp. Surely I have better things to do with my time.
And yet there we were, watching at an uncommon hour, as many millions surely did, as if history hasn’t repeatedly shown that well-intentioned humans are often capable of making the same, regrettable decision.
Of course they are. They also tune in to watch the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium in Arlington Texas, the venue for this fight. At least those games have some promise of drama, though. Tyson hasn't fought in nineteen years prior to last night, which is still more recent than the Cowboys' last division-round playoff win (1995). What did anyone expect from a fight between a 27-year-old current champion and a long-retired has-been?
A lot, apparently. Enough people tuned into the stream to knock it out, which is more than either boxer could do in the ring. The New York Times reports that "tens of thousands of Netflix users" complained about the stream, but that was just those on Twitter/X. Did anyone see the fight without interruption?
Tens of thousands of Netflix users reported that the service was not working for them ahead of a fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul on Friday, with many saying that the livestream was failing to load.
The keyword #NetflixCrash was trending on the social media platform X in the United States on Friday night as Downdetector, which tracks user reports of internet disruptions, received more than 500,000 reports that people were having problems streaming on Netflix.
On that scale, it's pretty clear that the streaming failures were universal. That's absurd for an event that got as much investment as this stunt bout did. Gay reports that Tyson got $20 million from Netflix and the other promoters involved, and Paul got twice as much. Tyson landed a grand total of 18 punches in the 16-minute bout, while Paul landed 78, almost all of them jabs. That's $625,000 per landed punch, for all you green-visored drones in Accounting.
With purses that size, Netflix and the promoters clearly anticipated enough profits and viewers to make this profitable. Netflix promoted the event constantly on its service to make this a must-watch event -- and they succeeded. And yet, Netflix's server farm apparently got $20 and three extra hamsters for the spinning wheels providing the bandwidth.
Anybody else's @netflix service crashing constantly during #PaulTyson pic.twitter.com/jfw4KmMKVs— Yared Vazquez, M.D. (Octagon Doctor) (@dryared) November 16, 2024
This lack of infrastructure investment for an event as heavily promoted as this is inexcusable. Netflix shelled out tens of millions for what turned out to be Dancing With the Boxing Stars and did nothing to ensure its subscribers could watch the routines. Will those viewers trust Netflix to provide a stable streaming experience for their next live event after this? Will they trust Netflix to provide a stable streaming experience for any service after this, or start looking for that from their competition?
Paul got a unanimous win on points last night. Netflix suffered a technical knock-out, both in the event and to its credibility.
They better get it right for Christmas Day and the 2 NFL Games. Otherwise the Grinch will be firing a lot of technical staff.
Didn’t notice any problems streaming on Verizon FiOS.
I’ve seen better fights at a Waffle House...
Go figure.
I’d guess the entire thing was a way to get new Netflix monthly subscribers.
It was scripted...
The best fight of the night were the two chicks!
LOL!
LOL
Word on the street is that Jake Paul has mad respect for Mike Tyson and knew he was hurting for cash (Tyson's spending problems have followed him throughout his career).
He thought of a chance to offer Tyson one last big $20 million payday to help a friend out.
Paul clearly held back. He didn't want to hurt the guy. Tyson was winded by the second round.
I have FiOS in NJ and was getting alerts on my phone that Paul won while I was watching the sixth round. Even worse, the son of my next door neighbor (who has FiOS also), came home from watching the match while he had it on in the 4th round. Like someone says above, they better get it together for those games on Christmas Day, although I know my mother-in-law will not allow it to be on!
I had a lot of buffering problems in the earlier fights, but I have to say there were some really good fights, especially women’s super lightweight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano, those ladies were amazing.
The “AI” Large Language Model is not anywhere near as important as the Internet networking upgrades that are in the works to support whatever becomes of “AI.” (IMHO)
Yep. I was watching in San Diego and seeing the final results here and on Twitter while I was watching the 7th round.
It's great to be in the "cool kids" club again!
I noticed he has a tat of Che on his belly. I wonder what that is all about.
It all goes back to the net neutrality argument several years ago. Netflix and the rest of the streaming services were never paying for the final mile so to speak to the house. If you wanted excellent service, they would’ve had to charge more money for a month. Because they had such an interesting high rating thing in it pretty much crashed the bandwidth. It’s analogous to everybody turning on their water at the same time when you do that the water pressure goes way way down.
so who ‘won’?
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