Netflix continues to express confidence that its streaming platform is prepared to handle the massive audiences expected for a pair of Christmas Day NFL games along with the start of its live coverage of the World Wrestling Entertainment’s “Raw” next month.
Concerns were raised after users experienced issues with buffering and low quality feeds during the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson boxing match last month.
Netflix has exclusive rights to stream NFL games on Christmas Day between the Kansas City Chiefs at the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens at the Houston Texans.
Beyonce is scheduled to perform during halftime of the Ravens-Texans game, which could create more server traffic Netflix must take into account.
It’s a major test after the company reported an average global live audience of 108 million viewers for Paul’s victory over Tyson in Arlington, Texas. Downdetector.com, which tracks service outages, announced that there were 90,000 issues reported at one point.
“It was a big number, but you don’t know, and you can’t learn these things until you do them, so you take a big swing,” Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria told Front Office Sports. “Our teams and our engineers are amazing, moved super quickly, and stabilized it, and many of the members had it back up and running pretty quickly. But we learn from these things.
“We’ve all obviously done a lot of stuff to learn and get ready for the NFL and Beyonce, and so we’re totally ready and excited for WWE.”
WWE president Nick Khan told FOS that Raw’s tone and content will not change as it moves to the streaming service, with its first event of 2025 scheduled for Jan. 6.
“There’s some online chatter about, ‘oh, it’s going to be R-rated, or for us old folks, X-rated.’ That’s definitely not happening,” Khan said. “It’s family-friendly, multi-generational, advertiser-friendly programming. It’s going to stay that way. I would look for more global flair, especially as the relationship continues to develop.”
–Field Level Media