Netflix executives have long stated that the streaming giant wasn’t going to get involved in the ever-expanding business of live sports rights, but it’s possible that attitude is changing after the massive success of the recent Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson card.
With the company touting over 108 million viewers for the broadcast, Netflix next dips its toe into the sports waters with a pair of NFL games on Christmas Day before welcoming the WWE in early 2025 after landing a $5 billion deal over 10 years for the promotion’s flagship series Monday Night Raw.
It’s entirely possible that Netflix’s next major jump into live sports could come next year when potential suitors start bidding for the UFC’s broadcast rights. UFC CEO Dana White didn’t discount that possibility even if he believes Netflix made a mistake by not getting involved in live sports much sooner, especially after what just happened with the Paul vs. Tyson fight.
“I always believed it,” White said about Netflix when speaking to the Sports Business Journal “I always thought that Netflix was crazy not to get into live sports sooner than they did. Those guys truly have a global footprint. I think they’re late to the game. It was a big success.”
If there was one major complaint about the Netflix broadcast for Paul vs. Tyson, it was the streaming issue that many viewers had with 65 million concurrent streams bombarding servers to watch the main event this past Saturday night. That resulted in some viewers complaining that they couldn’t even get the event to load properly while others were dealing with constant freezing and lackluster picture quality throughout the broadcast.
For his part, White says he didn’t actually experience those problems, but he believes Netflix used Paul vs. Tyson as a way to learn more about live streaming before the NFL lands there in December.
“I actually thought it was smart of them to [do this fight],” White explained. “I didn’t think the event was a great event, but they needed to do that. They knew Mike Tyson was going to bring in big numbers. Mike Tyson was going to pull a big number and this was a good test for them before they start airing the NFL. They’re saying it was over 65 million people tuning in at the same time.
“I was in a hotel room in New York, and I didn’t have a bad experience. It was a little grainy here and there, but I didn’t have a horrible experience. I’ve seen some other people say they did, but I didn’t.”
While conversations about Netflix potentially getting into business with UFC won’t actually have a chance to start until next year, White isn’t ruling out the possibility of working with anybody once negotiations begin.
He praised the relationship UFC has built with ESPN and Disney since inking a deal to move all of the promotion’s programming there in 2018, but White knows there are going to be plenty of interested networks hoping to get into business with the MMA superpower in the near future.
“We’re the biggest pay-per-view provider on the planet,” White said. “I think we’re going to do very well going into this next deal.
“I think as we go into our negotiations in 2025, this thing could play out in a lot of different ways. Obviously we could be with Disney and ESPN for however many years or you could see all our content get chopped up like WWE and NFL does and different products going to different networks. I don’t know how that’s going to play out as we get closer to getting into these negotiations, but it is a possibility.”
