Netflix’s Friday Night Fights

Mike Tyson and Jake Paul face off during weigh-ins before their upcoming fight. Photo via Getty.

Any Friday night plans? A decent number of you will probably tune into tonight’s boxing match on Netflix between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul because you’re curious whether the great heavyweight of the 1980s can, at the age of 58, beat the 27-year-old influencer turned pugilist. Another group of you may watch more because you’re curious how Netflix is going to present the event to its nearly 300 million subscribers—and where the streaming service might go next in live sports.

The Tyson-Paul fight is one of Netflix’s biggest bets yet on live sports. The company has been far more cautious than peers like Amazon, Apple and Google about paying top dollar for expansive rights to sports leagues. For example, it’s only dabbling in the NFL by securing rights to air two games on Christmas Day. For a time, it looked like Netflix was more comfortable with what it called “sports-adjacent” programming like “Drive to Survive,” its hit series on F-1 racing.