Thousands Report Netflix Livestream Crashes During Mike Tyson-Jake Paul Fight

Users across the U.S. reported being unable to load the high-profile boxing match.

Tens of thousands of Netflix users reported that the service was not working for them ahead of a fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul on Friday, with many saying that the livestream was failing to load.

The keyword #NetflixCrash was trending on the social media platform X in the United States on Friday night as Downdetector, which tracks user reports of internet disruptions, received more than 500,000 reports that people were having problems streaming on Netflix.

Netflix declined to comment.

Many of the complaints about a Netflix outage on social media were centered on the eight-round heavyweight boxing match between Mr. Tyson, a former heavyweight world champion, and Mr. Paul, a YouTuber. The livestream for that fight began at 10 p.m. Eastern time, before the fight started.

Frustrated viewers posted videos showing the frozen stream on their monitors.

The live show, “Paul vs. Tyson,” was scheduled to stream for about four and a half hours globally. Netflix has 283 million subscribers in more than 190 countries.

“We crashed the site,” Paul said in an interview after defeating Tyson, though the exact cause of the problem was not immediately known.

“I’m in the classic torture chamber,” Dave Portnoy, the founder of the Barstool Sports media network and a social media personalty, said on X, “where I can’t tell if my internet keeps going out or whether #Netflix is just constantly buffering and unwatchable for everybody.”

The outage reports on Downdetector, which started to rise around when the livestream began for the Paul-Tyson fight, came from across the United States, according to a map provided by the tracking service.

Nicole Sperling contributed reporting.

Inside the Media Industry

• The Onion: The satirical publication said that it had won a bankruptcy auction to acquire Infowars, a website founded by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
• ‘Today’: Craig Melvin, the veteran NBC News host, will succeed Hoda Kotb as an anchor of the network’s flagship morning show.
• Niche Streamers: The streaming wars didn’t kill smaller streaming services like Hallmark+ and BritBox. In fact, they’re thriving.
• Dynamo: Nicholas Carlson, the former top editor of Business Insider, is starting a new company that will focus on video. Just don’t call it a “pivot to video.”
• CNN: Chris Wallace, a veteran TV anchor who left Fox News for CNN three years ago, announced that he was leaving his post to venture into the streaming or podcasting worlds.