We would have loved to be in the Netflix meeting when Ted and Greg stood up in front of their team and jointly said, “Folks we have a fantastic idea. We’re going to live stream this circus event in November between an old guy and young kid to all of 282M folks who want to watch on their iPhone, computer or big screen TV.”
Of course, one of the techs who knew better nicely said, “Are you out of your freakin mind?”
O.K., maybe the meeting didn’t go exactly that way, but anyone who understands – really understands – the internet and the laws of physics, knew the odds weren’t in their favor.
But when Netflix announced that one of the “boxing fights of the century” – Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson – would be streamed live, we were “a little skeptical.”
We’ve never really been drawn to an event just because it was being shown live, let alone a boxing match.
Like millions of other people around the world, we watched prerecorded and “live” segments of the Paris Olympics, depending upon the sport and individual participant.
When the stars were in perfect alignment and the event was being held at a reasonable local time, we watched it on our home TV or on our phone…a screen is a screen.
We never followed Paul when he was a social media influencer; and when he decided to change careers, there was less of an incentive.
Tyson had a “colorful” career but that was back when we were both kids and people know he has a terrific bite (https://tinyurl.com/3pas35xz).
Still, the idea of two people standing on a stage trying to beat each other silly until one goes down or someone decides it’s time for everyone to go home, simply isn’t the kind of entertainment we’re into.
But hey…whatever floats your boat.
For us, the really big news surrounding the spectacle was that Netflix was going to attempt to live stream the event to as many of their global subscribers – 282.7M subscribers – who wanted to watch.

Before the Nov. 15 “fight,” the Netflix marketing team promoted the event everywhere.
And for added excitement, they included all of the drama and trash talk leading up to the fight.
Post event (which Paul won by a decision), Sarandos reported that they had a live audience of 108M folks watching during the five-and-a-half-hour spectacle.
Yes, that’s a lot of video streams!
Despite all of their preparation, and we’re certain there was a full-blown rehearsal of content prep and delivery, Sarandos said they had “a few technical glitches.”
As robust – and fragile – as the internet is today, that event didn’t have a few glitches…they simply highlighted the flexibility of what was originally conceived to be the global system of interconnected computer network of networks can be bent but not broken.
The whole idea underlying the internet has always been to enable devices, things and people to communicate with each other anywhere in the world at any time.
It isn’t the first time the validity of the internet has been tested.
It sure won’t be the last.

The first person we knew – and worked with – who thought that live streaming over the internet was possible was Pushpendra (Push) Mohta back in 1999. Push guided the development of CERFnet (California Education and Research Foundation), one of the first national ISPs (internet service providers) in the US.
The organization and team were instrumental in rolling out the global web hosting and internet business we all enjoy today.
Today, it’s part of AT&T, but back then…
Push, like Vint Cerf and the other internet pioneers, thought everything was possible over the internet.
He was given an opportunity/challenge to stream the largest online streaming event of its time – the Victoria Secrets fashion show – to internet users…everywhere.

What could go wrong?
- Dial-up modems were the common way to connect to the internet over regular phone lines
- Top speed was a blistering 56kbps, a “little” slower than today’s internet browsing
- Managing the NOC (network operations center) required constant monitoring and tweaking to keep systems connected and the slow video feed flowing
Because the streaming show represented a front row seat to the American lingerie show, the team (mostly male) volunteered to keep the content flowing during the show, even though they had to work overtime.

The largest online streaming event was viewed by an amazing 1.5M people.
It didn’t break the internet.
But like the bleeding edge projects that have followed, viewers still took issue with the problems.
During the 45-minute show, folks experienced frame freezes, buffering, sound gaps, dropped/slowed connections and just about every problem you can imagine while live streaming video content over a high-speed (56kbps) line could encounter.
The internet got pummeled but it was still standing at the end of the show.
Everything is better today but the internet is still the internet.
As the industry has switched from copper to fiber optic cable, capacity, speeds and reliability have improved.
Streaming video requires more bandwidth than simple data over the internet–especially when you are pushing higher- and higher-quality video.

In other words, the higher quality video you expect to watch, the more internet bandwidth is required.
If you want to be one of the largest and the most (only) profitable streaming video services, you have to consistently do things better.
A project like the Paul/Tyson fight or the upcoming Christmas Day football games – Super Bowl LVIII, Ravens vs Texans and Beyonce’s halftime show – it’s more about technologies than camera angles, edits and performers (combatants).
Working closely with SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), Netflix has developed a number of unique, bandwidth conservative codecs:
- H.264/AVC Main
- H.264 High Profile
- VP9
- HEVC
- AV1
All of that work makes it possible for Netflix (and other streamers) to reduce bandwidth usage by 50 percent for 4K, so video streams have the best “head room” – preferably 30-40 percent – possible.

After several years of using the industry’s largest CDN (content delivery network) services – Akamai, Level3, Limelight – Netflix built out its own CDN.
They strategically placed video servers around the globe to reliably store content – shows/movies – as close as possible to the viewer for the best entertainment possible.
But live streaming is an entirely different beast than tuning in and watching a show or movie…
It still relies on CDNs but if there’s a little bit of delay between the prerecorded content and what you see on the screen of choice…NBD.
According to BetMGM, the sportsbook, the Tyson-Paul fight had more bets placed – and money wagered – than any other MMA or boxing match, ever.

So, we guess if you’re one of the millions of folks who bet on the Paul/Tyson fight, a little video delay might be a big deal!
Of course, the mere fact that Paul left the ring $40M richer and Tyson walked away with $20M probably eased some of their bruises.
We’re pretty sure Netflix just viewed the matchup as another test – learning experience – for their Open Connect CDN and the performance of local ISPs.
Yeah, the critical part of the wired/wireless internet is the last 100 feet to your viewing device.
So, we think the old guy and kid fight was just more validation that DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) backed a real winner when they funded the internet project back in the ‘60s.

We’ll see if Sarandos and his team are able to deliver the Christmas football games, and Beyonce’s halftime performance, flawlessly.
If there is a little hiccup in the stream, it will probably be because your local ISP has a problem delivering the content to your screen.
But we all know that it will be Netflix’s fault, right?
As for Push and his old team, they’re probably going to simply sit back, watch the game and remember when the internet and streaming used to be really hard!
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Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 800 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.