Mike Tyson and Jake Paul will face off in the boxing ring this July. Will the bout be the most-watched fight of all time? The numbers suggest it’s likely.
A quick scour of the internet for official combat sports viewership records simultaneously reveals so much and so little.
You’re flooded with pay-per-view (PPV) figures in the millions, but they only reveal half the story.
This is because PPV figures don’t necessarily equate to total views; those numbers come from estimates. Educated estimates, but estimates nonetheless.
When Jake Paul and Mike Tyson step into the ring at AT&T Arena in Dallas in July, the pair have a chance to set combat sports history books, by drawing a record audience.
But how achievable is this feat?
Can Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul become the most-watched fight of all time?
Depending on where you conduct your research, either Floyd Mayweather’s fight against Manny Pacquiao is the most-watched boxing event of all time, or The Rumble in the Jungle is the most-watched fight of all time.
The former, which occurred in 2015, sold 4.6 million PPVs, more than any fight in history. When you take watch parties, public viewings and illegal streaming into consideration, it’s likely many, many more than that actually watched the fight.
And then, according to some reports, nearly one billion people tuned into The Rumble in the Jungle, when Muhammad Ali and George Foreman clashed in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1974. To provide perspective, that’s one-quarter of the world’s population at the time tuning in to watch two behemoths of the heavyweight division clatter into each other.
Simply put, it’s too good to be true. Really, it is. Further estimations put the official viewership of the bout somewhere in the hundreds of millions. Still a considerable amount, no doubt about it, but hardly one billion people tuning in.
Other sources claim 1971’s Fight of the Century, contested between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier, was watched by 300 million people worldwide.
Can Mike Tyson’s meaningless-yet-potentially-historic clash with Jake Paul on 20 July 2024, exceed these viewership figures?
Nakisa Bidarian, co-founder of Most Valuable Promotions (MVP), which inked the deal with Netflix in November 2023, certainly believes so.
“Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson is a once-in-a-lifetime dream matchup and I anticipate it will be the most-watched boxing event in modern boxing history,” Bidarian explained. And he could be on the money.
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Jake Paul is a modern-day celebrity, whose stardom rose through the social media age; apps like Vine, TikTok and YouTube. He’s one of the most recognisable faces to a younger demographic going around.
Paul’s YouTube has 20 million subscribers, his most engaged video has nearly 300 million views and his Instagram account is followed by 26 million people. Add to the equation his brother Logan, who boasts a similar amount stardom, and you have a dynamic combination that is every modern marketing agent’s dream.
Throw into the mix Mike Tyson’s multi-generational star power. At one time, he could lay claim to being one of the most famous men on the planet, such was his ferocity and power in the ring, combined with his enigmatic personality. Despite Tyson’s retirement from professional boxing in 2005, he remains one of world sports’ most recognisable figures, if not for his distinguished career than for his next-level face tattoo.
However, despite the social prominence of Paul and Tyson’s sporting pedigree, this fight is hardly Mayweather v Pacquiao, Ali v Frazier or Ali v Foreman. The pair has all to gain and nothing to lose.
There is no jeopardy. If Paul loses, he’s lost to one of the baddest men of all time and a former heavyweight champion. If Tyson loses, he’s lost to someone half his age. Both men leave without much shame.
How then, can a fight under these conditions, in the absence of jeopardy, with no titles on the line, eclipse the records set by its far superior, far more skilled forefathers?
Enter, Netflix. According to data from Statista, the streaming platform has over 260 million subscribers globally, as of Q4 2023. A considerable number of people, all of whom will be funnelled promotional content for the fight in the coming months.
The streaming platform have also not confirmed whether they will open the fight up to one-time viewers, like pay-per-view, paving the way for millions of non-subscribers to tune into the fight, boosting its total audience substantially.
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Of course, not every single Netflix subscriber will tune in to the fight live. The same can be said for the 20-odd million subscribers/followers of Jake Paul, and his brother. That doesn’t need to be the case, though.
This fight will not exclusively appeal to Jake Paul fans. It won’t just be 13-year-olds glued to Netflix on their laptop or phone screens. It will attract many, many fans of an older generation, many of whom are dying for someone of their vintage to show the kids what they’re made of, that there is nothing the new generation can do that the old generation cannot.
Seeing Tyson in the boxing ring again will no doubt induce a wave of nostalgia.
In fact, many old heads would watch purely to see Tyson beat someone more than half his age. In fact, many younger viewers who mightn’t be the biggest Jake Paul will tune in just for the chance to ‘hate-watch’ him experiencing Mike Tyson’s explosive raw power first-hand.
So, while neither men are at the top of their game, don’t discredit the pull social media will have in this unique instance. Streaming and social media platforms garner millions of eyeballs daily. Jake Paul and Mike Tyson’s fight will be just the next in a long stream of content designed to capture people’s attention.
It costs to stream Netflix, but the spend will get new subscribers the whole package. That makes this event very different to your standard Pay-Per-View.
Not only does this fight have the potential to break the record for the most-viewed sport of all time, but the internet as well.
