A Florida Man is looking to take Netflix to court over the streaming platform’s glitching and buffering issues during its Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul live stream. Florida man Ronald “Blue” Denton filed a suit against the company in Florida state court per WFLA-TV.
Denton filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Netflix breached its contract over the event’s frequent glitches and buffering and is seeking damages of $50 million. “Instead of providing the programming its viewers pay for every month, Netflix was completely unprepared and unable to fix the issues,” and subscribers “did not get what they bargained for as they missed large portions of the fight(s), if not the fight altogether,” according to the lawsuit.
From the WFLA-TV report:
At 9:26 p.m., 69,000 users reported issues accessing the streaming service. NBC Chicago contacted Netflix for a response to the troubles and was told, in part, “Nothing to comment on at this time…”
Per the report, that number increased to at least 98,000 Netflix subscribers reported outages, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages in real-time. Boxing fans, along with the average Americans wanting to see a legend in what would most likely be his last fight, were faced with legendary problems, including: no access, streaming glitches and buffering issues,” the lawsuit said.
As for Netflix, the streaming behemoth’s next live event will be a pair of NFL games on Christmas Day. After the Paul-Tyson fight, many have questioned if Netflix will be able to handle the technical challenges of a highly-watched event like NFL football. With such high stakes, Netflix has discussed the issues with the NFL, per an ESPN report:
Netflix said the fight reached 60 million homes, and apparently part of the explanation to the league was that the unprecedented scale for them of broadcasting a live sporting event contributed to some of the challenges they faced. But the NFL came away from the conversations reassured that Netflix had figured out what went wrong and that it won’t be a problem for Chiefs-Steelers or Ravens-Texans on Dec. 25.
Beginning on January 6, Netflix will be the new home of WWE Raw and many are concerned if the platform will be able to handle the viewership of the longest-running weekly episodic program in television history with no reruns. Like the NFL, Netflix has assured the WWE that everything will be under control once Raw premieres, per a report from Fightful Select.
[Credit: WFLA TV]