Netflix exec: 'Very ready' for XMas NFL games despite Paul-Tyson issues

Field Level Media|published: Mon 18th November, 21:22 2024

Kansas City's Patrick Mahomes starts to run with the ball when he can't find an open receiver late in the fourth quarter. His run for a first down was waived off when his team got called for a penalty. The Bills hosted Kansas City Chiefs in Orchard Park, Nov.17, 2024.

Despite having viewers deal with frequent buffering, low quality feeds and other stream-related issues during Jake Paul's victory over Mike Tyson in a boxing match on Friday night, Netflix is fully prepared to prove its worth as a sports streaming service.

Netflix will get to air a pair of NFL games on Christmas Day, providing streams for meetings between the Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens and Houston Texans.

Beyonce is scheduled to perform during halftime of the Ravens-Texans game, which could create more server traffic that Netflix will have to account for.

"We feel very ready and excited for the NFL on Christmas," Netflix content chief Bela Bajaria said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sixty million viewers tuned into Netflix for the Paul-Tyson fight, with Downdetector.com, which tracks service outages, announcing that there were 90,000 issues reported at one point.

"This unprecedented scale created many technical challenges, which the launch team tackled brilliantly by prioritizing stability of the stream for the majority of viewers," Netflix chief technology officer Elizabeth Stone wrote in a memo issued to the company following the bout, according to a reporter at Bloomberg. "We don't want to dismiss the poor experience of some members, and know we have room for improvement, but still consider this event a huge success."

CBS Sports will be helping out on the production side of things on Christmas Day. However, it will be Netflix that is responsible for how the viewing experience turns out.

--Field Level Media