The November 15th “boxing” match between former YouTuber Jake Paul and former heavy weight champion Mike Tyson may have been a unanimous decision points win for Paul, but it was a disaster on a number of levels. The headlining fight was atrocious. We correctly predicted months ago that the fight would be awful, but we were so focused on the fight that we forgot the other potential failure point; Netflix’s actual stream.
It failed so hard someone is suing the streaming platform because of it.
If you tried to tune into the live broadcast of the Paul vs Tyson event, you may have encountered some issues with the stream dropping or not being able to connect to it. There was absolutely no doubt that the fight was going to be a huge draw, but you’d think Netflix would have anticipated this and prepared for the influx of viewers. If it did, it didn’t prepare well enough and the result was quite a bit of backlash on social media and a lawsuit from Ronald Denton of Florida.
Denton filed suit against Netflix in the state of Florida for what his attorneys claim is a breach of contract, amongst other things. The suit claims Denton and others met with “legendary problems, including: no access, streaming glitches, and buffering issues.” Is it possible to strike down a lawsuit for inappropriate use of the word “legendary?” Because if it isn’t, it needs to be. Though yes, there were widespread issues with buffering and lack of access, that’s very much true.
Will anything come of the lawsuit? Probably not. Technical issues happen and it’s not like a traditional pay-per-view event where someone pays upwards of $50 for the one event. You could make a much stronger case for a refund if that were the situation. Here though, the litigant is seeking unspecified damages and it’s hard to imagine it’ll progress anywhere. Probably would have better luck just asking Netflix for a free month’s subscription.
And besides, we all know what the people really wanted to see.
