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Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson Did Super Bowl Viewership Numbers

tony maglio
·2-min read

Everybody was a winner of the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match — just not, you know, the viewers.

The Tyson vs. Paul fight averaged 108 million live viewers, globally, from the first bell to the final bell. Those are Super Bowl numbers, except for the fact that when we report the Super Bowl viewership as reported by Nielsen we are talking about the U.S. only. The 108 million-viewers “average minute audience” (AMA) is a combination of TVision’s measurement in the U.S. (like Nielsen, TVision only measures the U.S.) and “first party data” internationally, as Netflix said in a Tuesday press release. In other words, Netflix is using its own numbers in non-U.S. markets.

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With one day of delayed viewing, the sum total grows to 125 million global viewers, Netflix said.

The actual Paul vs. Tyson bout streamed live from about midnight ET to about 1 a.m. ET. During the time slot, a whopping 56 percent of all U.S. TV viewing was tuned in to the fight. The other 44 percent was probably left on “Buffering.” (That’s a joke.)

The Friday event was No. 1 on Netflix for the week in 78 countries, also including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, and the UK, the streamer said.

The main main event of “Paul vs. Tyson” peaked with 65 million concurrent streams; 38 million of those were in the U.S. The prior main event — Amanda Serrano vs. Katie Taylor 2 was billed as a “co-main event” — averaged an estimated 74 million live global viewers; 47 million were in the U.S., which is a new domestic viewership record for a professional women’s sports event. That one was a real boxing match.

Paul vs. Tyson wasn’t much of a fight because neither fighter put up a fight. The 27-year-old Paul threw jabs at the 58-year-old Tyson, who kept his dukes up but never really let them fly. The fight went the distance — if you consider “the distance” to be eight two-minute rounds — and Paul won by unanimous decision.

Netflix’s servers were so overloaded by demand for the fight that many members spent their night battling the live stream.

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