Netflix is facing a proposed class action from subscribers who were plagued by persistent buffering and freezing glitches that caused them to miss parts of the boxing spectacle between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson.
A Florida resident alleges Netflix was “woefully ill-prepared” for the nine-figure global audience that tuned into the bout. The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages on behalf of subscribers who had trouble watching the fight, brings claims for breach of contract and violations of Florida laws surrounding deceptive trade practices and consumer protection.
“Netflix customers experienced massive streaming issues and should have known better because it’s happened before,” states the complaint, filed on Monday in Florida state court.
For Netflix, which declined to comment, the fight emerged as the most viewed sporting event ever on the platform, with 108 million people watching worldwide, according to U.S. viewing tallies from analytics company TVision and Netflix’s first-party data. Touting viewership figures, the company said that the fight brought in 60 million of its member households, or about one of every five subscription holders.
Leading up to the main event, “NetflixBroken,” “unwatchable” and “#buffering” surfaced as trending topics on X. When asked if the streamer was prepared for the magnitude of viewers expected to watch in an interview before the showdown, Gabe Spritzer, vice president of Netflix’s sports arm, told The Hollywood Reporter, “on the tech side, everyone is excited and prepared.” Fight promoter Nakisa Bidarian added that he was confident that Netflix’s “servers are going to be up for it.”
The lawsuit claims that viewers faced streaming glitches and buffering issues throughout the event, with some completely unable to access the stream. It takes issues with Netflix declining to offer refunds or discounts.
Subscribers started to complain of streaming issues at 7 p.m. CT, according to Down Detector, which monitors service outages. Nearly three hours later, there were roughly 97,000 reports.
“Instead of providing the programming its viewers pay for every month, Netflix was completely unprepared and unable to fix the issues,” states the complaint, which stresses the company’s “failure to fulfill contractual obligations” as they “continued billing for services not delivered.”
The fight wasn’t the first time Netflix faced technical issues for a live event. Last year, the live reunion for season four of Love is Blind was delayed by more than an hour. Without pointing to a specific cause, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters expressed confidence that the company maintains the infrastructure to support live broadcasts.
The lawsuit, filed by Ronald Denton, seeks unspecified damages and looks to represent all subscribers who faced issues watching the fight. It brings claims for breach of contract and violations of Florida’s unfair and deceptive trade practices and consumer collection practices act.
Seth Abramovitch contributed to this report.
