• Netflix’s Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight and NFL games drove surges in daily signups, data shows.
• These 2024 events were among Netflix’s early entries into live sports.
• The new subscription data shows the live sports strategy is paying off for the streaming giant.

Live sports are paying off for Netflix, new subscription data shows.

The company had big spikes in daily signups during major live events last year, according to media-subscription research firm Antenna. These included the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight and NFL games on Christmas Day.

Netflix brought in 1.4 million US signups for the boxing match, while the Christmas games drove 700 million, per a report Antenna published Tuesday.

Alongside live sports, Antenna said Netflix’s password-sharing restrictions, which rolled out in the US in 2023, have helped boost signups by limiting the number of people who can use one account.

“It was a good start for Netflix into its foray of live acquisition sports,” said Jonathan Carson, Antenna’s CEO, in a webinar about the report.

Netflix is pursuing more live sports and events. The streamer kicked off a deal with the WWE this year and landed exclusive US rights to the FIFA Women’s World Cup for 2027 and 2031. The company wants more NFL rights, too, content chief Bela Bajaria told the podcast “The Town with Matt Beloni.”

Netflix highlighted sports in January as it announced a record 19 million new subscribers. The company called the Paul-Tyson fight the most-streamed sporting event ever and the NFL Christmas Day games the two most streamed NFL games in history.

Carson at Antenna said Netflix’s subscriber leap shows an industry giant that has been around for as long as Netflix can still drive better business results with new tools and strategies.

“When Netflix announced that they were getting into these live events, these big moments in time, there was a question as to whether these could drive big surges of acquisition,” Carson said. “The results have been pretty impressive.”

Users who signed up for live sports weren’t as loyal as other Netflix subscribers

Driving signups is half only the battle. Netflix also needs to keep these new customers around.

Antenna found that 79% of the US subscribers who signed up for the Paul vs. Tyson fight stuck around one month later. That’s lower than Netflix’s overall benchmark of user loyalty, which is 86%, per Antenna.

However, it was still higher than the benchmark for loyalty at other premium subscription streaming services that Antenna tracks. 21% of users who signed up to watch the fight canceled their subscriptions within a month of subscribing. Its competitor set, which includes streamers such as Paramount+ or Hulu, saw 26% of users cancel in a similar timeframe.

Antenna’s data also showed other positives for Netflix:

• Netflix was one of five streaming subscriptions that grew gross additions by double digits year over year in 2024. It also captured 15% of gross additions in the category, in line with Hulu and behind Paramount+’s 17%.
• Netflix had the highest retention rate for a standalone service, with 74% of users who subscribed from July to September sticking with the service after three months. Its retention rate was second only to Disney and Warner Bros Discovery’s bundle, which had an 80% retention rate during the period.