Why Netflix’s Investment In Boxing Is A Marriage Made In Heaven

Terence Crawford fought Canelo Alvarez in a championship bout aired on Netflix. (Photo by Josh Hedges/TKO Worldwide LLC via Getty Images)

TKO Worldwide LLC via Getty Images

It’s a question that often gets asked: Is boxing a dying sport? And here’s the one-word proof of how silly the question is: Netflix.

The streaming giant has leaped into the squared circle, airing boxing events that have recorded bonkers viewership numbers that ultimately drive the all-powerful advertising and sponsorship dollar.

Think about this: Netflix announced that 41 million viewers tuned in to the streaming service to watch Saturday night’s Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford fight; that’s five million more viewers than the first four games combined of the 2025 NBA finals.

The event, which saw Crawford dethrone Alvarez for the super middleweight title, was also No. 1 on Netflix in 30 countries, including the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Ireland and Australia, while also cracking the top 10 in 91 other countries.

It should be noted that Netflix’s metrics are a result of a combination of internal, non-audited data and measurement from VideoAmp, a challenger to Nielsen that’s not been granted accreditation from the Media Ratings Council, as reported by Front Office Sports.

Nevertheless, even bigger viewership numbers are expected when Netflix airs the next Jake Paul fight on November 14 — a match that will pit Paul against Gervonta “Tank” Davis, the current lightweight champion who has mass appeal with 7.5 million followers on Instagram alone.

Netflix has seen how Paul leverages his enormous social media following, bringing new and younger fans to boxing, and how he also creates compelling storylines that attract significant media attention.

Like Paul, Netflix has its own formula for success in the boxing ring: It leverages its production expertise to build hype around live events through documentaries, behind-the-scenes features, and other content. This transforms a single boxing match into a larger cultural event, deepening engagement with sports fans. A prime example was Netflix’s first foray into the sport last November when it built out the ultimate spectacle when Paul fought the iconic Mike Tyson.

According to Netflix, the Tyson-Paul match drew an estimated 108 million live global viewers and peaked at 65 million concurrent streams, making it the most-streamed sporting event ever; that’s inching towards Super Bowl numbers, with the last one watched by 127.7 million people across all platforms.

Even though the fight itself rated as a dud, Tyson-Paul reportedly drummed up 1.43 million new subscribers for the streamer.

And a historical side-note: On the Tyson-Paul undercard, the rematch between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano became the most-watched women’s sporting event in U.S. history, reaching an average of 74 million live viewers globally and 47 million in the U.S., establishing a new benchmark for viewership in women’s sports.

Then in July, Netflix, along with Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions, produced the first-ever all-women’s professional boxing card headlined by Taylor-Serrano III — a fight that tallied 6 million viewers, which is the most watched women’s professional sporting event of 2025 so far.

More context of how big Taylor-Serrano III was for women’s sports: It doubled the viewership of the most-watched WNBA Finals game ever: Game 5 of the 2024 Finals between the New York Liberty and the Minnesota Lynx, which peaked at 3.3 million viewers.

For comparison sake, the most-watched UFC fight in history is the UFC 229 main event between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov, which generated an all-time record of approximately 2.4 million pay-per-view buys in 2018; that’s less than half the audience that watched Taylor and Serrano’s trilogy fight and only a sliver (about 6% ) of the viewers who watched Crawford-Alvarez.

So it should be no shocker that UFC boss Dana White has recently jumped into the boxing business. White, in collaboration with Saudi promoter Turki Alalshikh and Netflix, promoted the Alvarez-Crawford bout, marking his entrée into boxing promotions with his Zuffa Boxing venture.

“What we did with the UFC is turn the UFC into an NFL, an NBA,” White said via heavy.com. “There’s a league, you reinvest into the sport, and other people want to invest in the sport, whether it’s sponsors or any of these financial firms, whatever it may be. That’s what needs to be done with boxing, too, and that’s what I’m going to attempt to do.”

White’s vision for a successful boxing league may eventually be realized — with Netflix as a promotional and producing partner perhaps. It’s been working so far.