The Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight was a payday for more than just the winner

MW The Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight was a payday for more than just the winner

By Weston Blasi

Here are the big financial winners of the Tyson-Paul boxing match on Netflix, which drew 60 million households

The boxing match between 27-year-old YouTube star Jake Paul and 58-year-old boxing legend Mike Tyson may have been a mediocre fight for viewers, but it still set numerous records.

The one-of-a-kind event ended with Paul securing a unanimous victory over the former heavyweight Tyson, but Paul wasn't the only one to come out on top of Friday's fight. Here are the other biggest winners:

Mike Tyson

There are just a handful of examples of officially sanctioned boxing matches featuring a person 58 or older. While many were understandably concerned about the health of Tyson heading into the fight, Tyson made it through the eight-round bout, and was not knocked down once. Tyson also did not appear to suffer any major injuries.

In addition to remaining relatively unscathed, Tyson made millions from the boxing match. While exact figures are not known, Tyson is reported to have made $20 million, compared to an estimated $40 million for Paul, according to Forbes.

"Iron Mike" accumulated $400 million in boxing earnings prior to this weekend, but filed for bankruptcy in 2003 after living a notoriously lavish lifestyle that included multiple mansions, several cars and Siberian tigers.

After Friday's fight, Tyson posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he "still won."

Sportsbooks

Sports-betting operators had a really good weekend for two major reasons.

First, the Tyson-Paul fight was a supremely popular event in terms of betting, and more bets are usually good for sportsbooks because they take a commission, or "vig," from each bet.

"Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight is the most-bet combat sport (boxing + MMA) in BetMGM history," Alex Rella, senior trader at BetMGM $(MGM)$, told MarketWatch. "Bettors wanted to see Paul get knocked out and loved Tyson as an underdog."

Nearly all U.S. sportsbooks had Paul as the betting favorite for the fight, but most of the bets were on Tyson. On BetMGM, 67% of all betting tickets were placed on Tyson, and 69% of all bets on DraftKings $(DKNG)$ were also on the former heavyweight champion.

"After months of anticipation for Tyson-Paul, the fight generated enormous action and went down as the single most-bet boxing match in DraftKings Sportsbook history," Johny Avello, director of race and sportsbook operations at DraftKings, told MarketWatch. "The bettors were yearning for Tyson to return to the ring even at 58 years old, and wanted to be a part of this moment with one of the icons of the sport."

The second reason is that public bettors were overwhelmingly backing the underdog Tyson over the highly polarizing Paul, which created a liability for sportsbooks if Tyson were to do the unthinkable and pull off the upset.

"Paul winning was a good outcome for the sportsbook," Rella said.

A few high-profile celebrities lost large sums of money on the fight. Rapper Drake posted a bet slip showing a $355,000 wager on Tyson, the UFC's Conor McGregor said he wagered $1 million on all the fights on Friday's card, including on Tyson to knock out Paul, and retired NBA player Shaquille O'Neal hinted at a bet on Tyson worth at least $10,000.

This was the most wagered-on fight in terms of tickets and total betting handle in history, multiple sportsbooks confirmed.

Since the U.S. ban on sports betting was lifted by the Supreme Court in 2018, it's been up to individual states to legislate it. Thirty-eight U.S. states now offer some form of legalized sports betting.

See also: How does a gambling site lose money? DraftKings just lost $250 million in revenue - mostly on NFL games.

Netflix

On several occasions during the fight's undercard, Netflix $(NFLX)$, the broadcaster of the live boxing match, experienced technical difficulties.

That led to some complaints on social media from Netflix subscribers, who didn't have to pay extra to stream the fight, unlike the pay-per-view tradition on rival streamers. But despite those glitches, Netflix said that 60 million households around the world watched the main event, peaking at 65 million concurrent streams. One analyst believes that equates to roughly 150 million total viewers, assuming an average of 2.5 viewers per household.

The strong viewership combined with the live aspect of the event may provide Netflix with some needed experience as it will soon debut its most important live broadcast to date: the NFL.

Netflix agreed to a $150 million deal to broadcast two Christmas Day NFL games this year, and will pay more for games in 2025 and 2026, according to Bloomberg. The deal represents Netflix's first foray into live games from one of the four major U.S. sports.

"While the press will focus on the technical bandwidth issues and customer complaints, our guess is that viewing was likely [approximately two times] internal expectations, a high-quality problem that can easily be fixed by Christmas Day," Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein wrote in a note to clients.

Wedbush analyst Alicia Reese adjusted the firm's price target for Netflix to $950 from $800 on Monday, and kept its outperform rating.

Some experts believe Netflix's introduction into live sports is a way for the streaming giant to provide even more value to customers, and possibly create an avenue to raise prices.

"I think we have to expect prices to be under continued pressure to rise. Streaming is a very expensive business, and it's also a bit of a vicious circle," Jacqueline Corbelli, CEO of BrightLine, a technology-software company that specializes in television advertising, told MarketWatch about Netflix's upcoming NFL slate.

"Being able to offer great content for your viewers means making higher and higher investments in producing it," Corbelli said. "Right now and for the foreseeable future, there are only two ways to pay for it. One is through increased advertising, and the other is by raising prices. I expect we will see both."

Shares of Netflix Inc. rose 2.8% Monday, and are up 78.5% over the past 12 months.

Representatives for Netflix, Paul and Tyson did not respond to requests for comment.

Read on: Here's how long Peacock needs its 2.8 million new NFL-fan subscribers to stick around

-Weston Blasi

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November 18, 2024 17:36 ET (22:36 GMT)

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