Netflix Stock Rises After Paul-Tyson Fight Draws in Millions of Viewers
Netflix sees last week’s Jake Paul-Mike Tyson match-up as a success. The streaming giant is still in the early rounds of its efforts to land sports fans—with the next big date coming up this holiday season.
Netflix (NFLX) wants to capture competitions that can become an “event,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos has said. It also wants to avoid inking expensive contracts with sports leagues. To that end, the company has so far hosted a live hotdog eating contest and a golf competition, with more events on the way.
Netflix touted the Paul-Tyson fight as record-setting, though some of its milestones were met off-screen, and viewers complained about streaming glitches. (Netflix declined to comment about viewers who vented on social media about spotty streaming.) Netflix’s next play for sports fans comes on Christmas when it is slated to show two National Football League games.
“We’re in live because our members love it,” Sarandos said in July. “It drives a ton of engagement and it drives a ton of excitement.”
“Advertisers like that, too,” he added.
AT&T Stadium collected $18 million in admissions from Friday’s fight, the second biggest boxing “gate” outside Las Vegas and the largest in the state of Texas, according to Netflix. Its distribution partner, Joe Hand Promotions, showed the event in more than 6,000 bars and restaurants, the broadest audience Joe Hand’s has seen for a combat sport in its 50-year history, Netflix said. Viewership for the headlining Paul and Tyson fight peaked at 65 million.
That may have lifted Netflix shares on Monday. The stock was recently up more than 2%, outpacing broader markets, earlier touching record highs.
The entertainment group has about a month to prepare for its next foray in live sports. Showing two football games on Christmas Day is a part of Netflix’s strategy for not giving sports leagues the upper hand in negotiations, Sarandos has said.”It’s very difficult to have big league sport and profit … when you offer them entire seasons,” he told analysts in July.1 But when you offer them in this event model that we’re building on, we’re really excited to do that without the risk.”
Still, Netflix found a way to make the math work for a full season of Raw, a WWE wrestling show and the top-ranked show on the USA Network. Raw will move from broadcast to Netflix in January, the companies said in a press release.
