Netflix Hopes For a Knockout With NFL Games

Netflix's ability to seamlessly beam movies and TV around the world helped it become the dominant streamer.

- JESSICA TOONKEL, PATIENCE HAGGIN And Suzanne Vranica

But in November, the company's glitch-marred stream of its boxing showcase featuring Mike Tyson and Jake Paul revealed the limits of its technological advantages.

Now, an even bigger test looms: its first-ever National Football League games on Christmas Day.

The lessons from the boxing bout are in sharp focus. Netflix greatly underestimated how many people would tune in to watch the fight, with viewership nearly tripling what it had anticipated, according to people familiar with the matter.

As a result, the company didn't sufficiently prepare its own content-delivery systems or its internet service provider partners for the surge of traffic from the 65 million concurrent streams the match drew at its peak, some of the people said.

While the boxing match was able to proceed despite some fans complaining of long load times or pixelated images, it was an unwelcome foul-up for a company preparing to air its first live NFL games on Christmas Day. It also revealed the complexity of bringing live sporting events to the global masses.

On a typical day, Netflix makes up about 11% of internet traffic in North America, according to Sandvine, a networking company that tracks web use.

During peak viewing of the fight, Netflix made up 39% of traffic for one internet provider, Sandvine data show.

Netflix's engineers told colleagues they were frustrated that they were underprepared for the match because of executives' overly conservative viewing estimates, the people said.

When viewers had trouble watching the fights, some of them would try to restart Netflix or watch from their mobile devices, adding to the problems.

In preparation for the games, Netflix has trained its customer service representatives to tell subscribers who contact them that restarting the app can make the problem worse, according to a person familiar with the situation.