MW Should Netflix investors worry about the technical troubles during the Paul-Tyson fight?
By Tomi Kilgore
Bandwidth issues likely resulted from the fight having about double the viewers than expected, analyst says
Shares of Netflix Inc. dropped Monday, as bandwidth issues sullied the streaming giant's much-celebrated live boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul on Friday night.
Should investors be worried, since Netflix has just about five weeks to fix the issues before it streams two NFL games live on Christmas Day?
Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein's simple answer to that question is, no.
Still, the stock $(NFLX)$ slumped 2.1% in premarket trading. It had fallen 1.6% on Friday ahead of the fight, after closing Thursday at a record $837.26.
Netflix noted after the Friday-night fight that 60 million households watched the main event around the world, peaking at 65 million concurrent streams.
Helfstein said that, assuming 2.5 viewers per household, about 150 million people watched the fight. That compares with the 124 million people who watched the NFL's 2024 Super Bowl, which he noted was the highest viewership for any U.S. broadcast.
"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," Helfstein wrote in a note to clients.
He reiterated his outperform rating he's had on the stock for at least the past three years.
Despite the social media backlash, Helfstein said he believes the fight demonstrates Netflix's ability to attract "meaningful viewership" for live events.
-Tomi Kilgore
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 18, 2024 08:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
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