Key Takeaways From Jake Paul’s & Mike Tyson’s Netflix Live Streamed Boxing (Mis)Match.
3 min readNov 16, 2024
- Influencers and YouTubers like Jake Paul have confirmed that the convergence of digital content and commerce is very real and at the heart of it is those that who know what they are doing are very much at the zeitgeist of what matters in the attention economy. Jake Paul is a genius at garnering attention for his personal brand across ALL media today and is monetizing it for all its worth. The era of the traditional celebrity has come to an end and influencers are now at the forefront of what matters most for content audiences from a digital-first perspective.
- Netflix is far from ready to hosting live sports events as we saw today not just in Kenya but globally. I tried to watch this fight on different mobile and fibre internet fibre services and none could get me a reliable and usable stream. At the end of it, I had to rely on checking text updates from a news website if you can imagine that! I am sure there will be lots of tweaking and re-tweaking of how Netflix’s streaming infrastructure is set-up for live streaming going forward since they missed out on a great opportunity to solidify their position as THE platform for live sports.
- Mike Tyson is clearly past his best and it was a bad mismatch against a much younger, fitter, and the decent heavyweight boxer that Jake Paul has become. I am sure that both of them are making many millions from this fight but also, for some reason, being streamed on Netflix, we all wanted to watch it as if it was an epic heavyweight title fight. Netflix DOES really matter if they managed to get all of us to want to watch a boxing fight that was so hyped up for months. Netflix can use this as a foundation to become the host for many more epic live sports events — locally, regionally, and globally in all the markets where they operate. Think about the implications of that for a second…
- Although Netflix underdelivered in terms of the user experience of this boxing match, we are seeing that streaming platforms and services have become a big part of where the world is consuming content. Live sports is obviously the holy grail of streaming content and you can only imagine in a few years time that Netflix will become a mainstay of live sports content when they could get the rights to stream major sports content like the globally popular English Premier League, for instance.
- Given how well Netflix has scaled globally in terms of garnering subscribers and also building an impressive roster of ‘Netflix Originals’ with a massive focus on localized and regional content that is contextually relevant to a myriad of cultures and languages, its fast becoming the world’s main source for ‘premium’ streaming content. That being said, YouTube still rules the roost and TikTok is also scaling up rapidly for ‘free’ streaming content.
- The business case for digital advertising on Netflix was made today in a very loud way. Given the reach and scope of this particular fight, imagine a scenario where brands in both global and local markets levels could run their advertising campaigns during the same. This is not unlike the NFL’s Super Bowl which is considered as the most effective marketing platform globally. Netflix could delivery hyper-personalized digital advertising placements using first-party subscriber data. The potential from this perspective is enormous with the prospect of delivering impressive return on advertising spend or ROAS for brands.
