Netflix’s big bet on sports events is expected to have driven more than nine million subscriber additions in the holiday quarter, lifted by the success of the ‘Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson’ boxing match and the debut of popular National Football League games.

The streaming pioneer, set to report results on Tuesday next, has added more high-profile sports content to its platform in recent months to attract both younger viewers and advertising dollars following its blockbuster password-sharing crackdown, a Reuters report stated yesterday.

More than 60 million households globally tuned in for the Tyson-Paul bout in November, while its NFL games on Christmas Day drew 26.5 million viewers on average in the United States.

Live sports provide “some stability for the advertising side and then from the subscription side, it just makes the account stickier for people who are already using Netflix,” eMarketer analyst Ross Benes said.

Advertisers typically pay a premium for ad placements during live events, especially those with large and loyal audiences such as NFL games, making sports key to Netflix’s goal of building out its ad-supported tier.

The company’s subscriber growth in the last three months of 2024 also benefited from the return of the hit South Korean series ‘Squid Game’, whose second season amassed a record 68 million views in its premiere week on the platform.

The 9.2 million subscribers Netflix potentially added in the fourth quarter would mark a big step up from the 5.1 million additions it saw in the third, but the figure is lower than the 13.1 million increase it posted a year ago, LSEG data showed.

This quarter will also be the last time Netflix reports subscriber additions, as the company emphasizes other performance metrics including revenue and profit – a change analysts attribute to slowing subscriber growth.