Netflix Tackles Buffering Woes Just in Time for NFL, WWE Debuts

Netflix believes it has wrestled down its buffering issues—just in time for not only Christmas Day NFL games but the Jan. 6 start of its live coverage of World Wrestling Entertainment’s Raw.

The streaming giant and the TKO Group Holdings–owned WWE are starting to trumpet the onset of its 10-year rights deal, which is estimated at more than $5 billion. Coverage of the pro wrestling property’s flagship weekly show will immediately become a key tentpole for Netflix, which says it has addressed its large-scale performance problems from last month.

Scrutiny on Netflix has heightened in recent weeks as its coverage of the Nov. 15 Jake Paul–Mike Tyson boxing match suffered from widespread outages. The NFL is still standing behind the company, which reported an average global live audience of 108 million viewers for the fight—though those numbers were not tabulated or audited by a highly established, third-party measurement agency. 

“It was a big number, but you don’t know, and you can’t learn these things until you do them, so you take a big swing,” said Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria, of the Paul-Tyson event. “Our teams and our engineers are amazing, moved super quickly, and stabilized it, and many of the members had it back up and running pretty quickly. But we learn from these things. We’ve all obviously done a lot of stuff to learn and get ready for the NFL and Beyoncé [on Christmas], and so we’re totally ready and excited for WWE.”

WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque also conveyed calm about any possible streaming issues. 

“I’ll just say if it blinks a couple of times and we do 60 million [households], I’m good with that,” he joked. 

Though Raw is moving to a streaming platform, WWE insists the program will not become more adult-oriented in its tone and content—a critical element as Netflix markets it to advertisers.

“There’s some online chatter about, ‘oh, it’s going to be R-rated, or for us old folks, X-rated.’ That’s definitely not happening,” said WWE president Nick Khan. “It’s family-friendly, multi-generational, advertiser-friendly programming. It’s going to stay that way. I would look for more global flair, especially as the relationship continues to develop.”

Runaway Stock

While the debate continues on both Netflix’s technical competence and metrics, the company’s stock is extending its run as one of the most remarkable stories in all of U.S. business in 2024. Shares in Netflix have soared by 96% this year, and by more than 20% just in the last month, closing Thursday at another company high of nearly $918 each. 

The ongoing exuberance from investors owes heavily to Netflix’s standing as by far the world’s largest streaming service, with 282.7 million subscribers as of the end of its last fiscal quarter, and plenty of room for future growth with the accelerating development of its still-nascent advertising business.