The Paul x Tyson fight helped Netflix drive record account growth–just before it stops reporting subscriber counts [Video]

Netflix expects live events like the Jake Paul x Mike Tyson boxing match to be “a small percentage of our total view hours and content expense,” but still thinks they will “result in outsized value to both our members and our business,” it said during its fourth-quarter earnings call this week.

The Paul x Tyson match and two NFL games, all aired exclusively by Netflix, helped drive the streamer to record viewership in December, and helped it clinch 18.9 million new subscribers for Q4 2024–more than double what analysts expected, and its biggest single-quarter subscriber growth in history.

This growth puts Netflix at over 300 million subscribers worldwide—and (fortuitously for Netflix) is likely the last official number we’ll hear from the company, since it’s decided to no longer report sub counts moving forward. As co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in November, Netflix is switching to a YouTube-esque watch time model of measuring viewer activity, “because we believe it’s the single …