The National Association of Broadcasters has seized on on Netflix‘s tech issues in last Friday night’s live stream of the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson boxing match.
With some 60 million global households tuning in for the long-awaited fight in Arlington, TX, the signal became blurry, buffered or altogether unavailable for many viewers, according to a flurry of social media posts.
“You were probably expecting exciting nonstop action,” Alex Siciliano, SVP of Communications for the broadcast lobbying organization, wrote Monday in a blog post. “Instead, what transpired was far more disappointing – a viewing experience marred by glitches and buffering from a popular pay-TV service trying its hand in live sports.”
Netflix is getting set to expand its presence in live sports and sports-adjacent programming, with a doubleheader of Christmas Day games and a multi-year deal with the WWE for Raw kicking off in January.
NAB lobbies the government on behalf of members including the major broadcast TV networks as well as local TV station owners. In the case of the NFL, media rules require games to be carried on linear broadcast TV in the markets of the two teams competing.
Siciliano issued a forecast calling for more blurriness. The fight “was a good reminder that when it comes to live sports, no other medium can match broadcast television’s high-quality, reliable viewing experience,” he wrote. “No costly subscriptions. No worrying about your internet speed. Just the excitement of the game, delivered in high-definition to your TV screen.”
Broadcast TV, the NAB exec continued, is known for its “‘one to many’ architecture. For popular sports programming, like the Super Bowl or World Series, there is no limit to how many viewers can tune in – and no risk of buffering.”
In announcing the viewership for the fight, Netflix noted that it peaked at 65 million households due to the global scale of the platform. That’s more than three times the viewing of a live-streamed NFL regular-season game and a larger crowd than virtually any live event.
In a memo to Netflix employees over the weekend, CTO Elizabeth Stone acknowledged “chatter in the press and on social media about the quality issues.” according to Bloomberg. She said the company nevertheless views the event as a “huge success” despite having “room for improvement” on the tech front.
