Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

I wonder if there will be any long term reputational repercussions for Netflix because of this. Amongst SWEs, Netflix is known for hiring the best people and their streaming service normally seems very solid. Other streaming services have definitely caught up a bit and are much more reliable then in the early days, but my impression still has always been that Netflix is a step above the rest technically.

This sure doesn't help with that impression, and it hasn't just been a momentary glitch but hours of instability. And the Netflix status page saying "Netflix is up! We are not currently experiencing an interruption to our streaming service." doesn't help either...

So the issue is that Netflix gets its performance from colocating caches of movies in ISP datacenters, and a live broadcast doesn't work with that. It's not just about the sheer numbers of viewers, it's that a live model totally undermines their entire infrastructure advantage.

See: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

I wonder how effective it would be to cache live events with a delay. Write to the tail, read from the head.

that’s totally unacceptable for live sports which people are able to bet on

I don't bet so I have no clue, but why is that? Are people able to place bets in the middle of the match or something? I would have assumed bets get locked in when the fight starts