Ted Sarandos defends Paul/Tyson stream, says Netflix has made progress in live events

With Christmas fast approaching, there’s really only one thing we all want: for Netflix to function with issue. After the utter debacle that was the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight — and we’re talking the streaming glitches here… — Netflix is now down to less than a month to get their act together before some major NFL games stream on Christmas Day. But don’t worry, Ted Sarandos has it under control! Or at least that’s what we wants us to think.

Speaking on the streaming issues that hounded the undercards and the main event last month, Sarandos said that Netflix had a challenge that had never been seen before. “We were pushing the [internet service provider], every ISP in the world, right to the limits of their own capacity. We were stressing the limits of the internet itself that night. So we had a control room up in Silicon Valley that was re-engineering the entire internet to keep it during this fight because of the unprecedented demand that was happening.”

Sarandos went on to continue praising Netflix for the draw that the Paul/Tyson had, making it the most-watched live streaming sporting event ever. “It’s really phenomenal. It’s a Super Bowl-like audience that we were able to draw for this fight. This is a combination of our content team recognizing that this was going to be a thing, our marketing and publicity teams and our social media teams and everybody making it a thing that you are not going to miss, no matter where you were in the world.”

That’s all good and well, but what’s the game plan for Netflix when it comes the future of the live sporting events they plan on streaming? Sarandos would cite the Love Is Blind reunion, which despite breaking records, was a mess when it came to the presentation. Even still, he remains optimistic, saying there was “a lot of positive trajectory in a very short amount of time” from Love Is Blind to last month’s bout. Just to break that one down, the Love Is Blind special in question came out in April of last year. So by Sarandos’ vision, April 2023 to November 2024 would be a “very short time.” Going off of that, what could he possibly call November 2024 to December 2024? And what will actually be done in that extremely limited amount of time?

With around 90,000 complaints reported during the Paul/Tyson event, Netflix has a lot of work to do to ensure that the two NFL games set for Christmas go smoothly. Added to that, Netflix has WWE coming to streaming in the first week of January, a $5 billion deal they don’t want putting them into submission.

What are you expecting from future live sporting events streaming on Netflix? Do you think it will take more time to perfect the issues than they have allowed?