During last night's boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, Netflix's "concurrent streams" peaked at "65 million," according to the fight's promoter, MostValuablePromotions. The group said in a press release that the streams were broadcast to 60 million homes around the world.
The crowds trying to watch Tyson vs. Paul appeared to be more than Netflix's servers could handle, as social networks were flooded with complaints about the quality of the stream, with many finding the stream to be of poor clarity or plagued by buffering and connection interruptions. According to Bloomberg, Downdetector logged more than 100,000 complaints about Netflix streaming issues during the event.
This is another time a large number of users are streaming a single live event simultaneously, Disney last year provided 59 million concurrent streams for a World Cup cricket match through its Disney Plus Hotstar service, and it hit similar numbers a few days ago and in June this year.
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Netflix Chief Technology Officer Elizabeth Stone told employees that the company is prioritizing keeping streaming stable "for the majority of viewers" as the company deals with this "unprecedented scale."
"We don't want to deny the poor experience some members had and know we have room for improvement, but we still consider this event to be a great success," Stone reportedly wrote.