Brandon Riegg has spent the better part of a decade trying to make live TV happen at Netflix. He joined the company in 2016, after stints at NBC, ABC, and VH1, where he\u2019d worked on shows like Dancing with the Stars, The Voice, <\/em>and America\u2019s Got Talent. <\/em>All those shows were the kind of unscripted reality fare he\u2019d been hired to bring to Netflix, but they also incorporated things like live voting to make the whole thing feel more urgent and interactive. \u201cI just felt like, if we\u2019re really trying to be the preeminent entertainment service in the world,\u201d Riegg tells me, \u201cwe should have all the tools at our disposal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So Riegg and Bela Bajaria, another longtime TV executive who joined Netflix around the same time and is now its chief content officer, began making the case around Netflix for why it should invest in the tech required to make live content work. Over and over, they got the same question: What do you want to do with it? <\/em>And for years, Riegg says, they didn\u2019t have a great answer. \u201cI\u2019d go, \u2018Well, I don\u2019t have something specific right now, but I want to be able to jump on things that require live capability if those things come up.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For years, that shrug of an answer didn\u2019t work. But somewhere around two years ago, the energy shifted. \u201cWe were continuing to talk about how we wanted to have something for everyone,\u201d he says, \u201cand there\u2019s a requirement of live for some programs. For us to do those things, for us to buy those things, we need to have that functionality.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Netflix has spent the last two years slowly learning how to do live programming and live streaming. It started with a Chris Rock comedy special last March, which was a technical success and a cultural hit. A few weeks later, it did a live Love Is Blind <\/em>reunion show, which was such a spectacular disaster that the reunion wound up being filmed and released later. Then there was a live feed of baby gorillas at the Cleveland Zoo, a strange golf event that teamed Formula 1 drivers up with PGA pros, the SAG Awards, a tennis exhibition, a roast of Tom Brady, and John Mulaney\u2019s slightly unhinged late night show Everybody\u2019s in LA.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n All that was, in some ways, just practice. Because the real tests of Netflix\u2019s live prowess came this fall. First, the Jake Paul \/ Mike Tyson fight in November, which the company says was watched by more than 65 million<\/a> Netflix subscribers around the world \u2014 and had lots of technical difficulties and delays<\/a> of its own. And next up, two NFL games on Christmas<\/a>, complete with a Beyonc\u00e9 halftime show<\/a>. The NFL is the biggest and most valuable<\/a> entertainment property in the US, and football is the most-watched thing<\/a> on television by a mile. Netflix is many things, but it is also now a live TV network. And you don\u2019t get to screw up football.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When Netflix struggled to keep up with the Paul \/ Tyson fight, a lot of viewers were surprised. Netflix has been streaming stuff forever\u2026 shouldn\u2019t it be good at this? <\/em>When I put that question to Elizabeth Stone, Netflix\u2019s CTO, she says that streaming live is very different from just streaming. Maybe more different than Netflix itself originally thought.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhen we\u2019re streaming video on demand,\u201d Stone says, \u201cwe get the benefit of planning ahead. That content is in its final format; the video, images, audio are in nicely packaged files, and they\u2019ve already gone through all the production steps, the encoding steps, they\u2019re ready to be placed on servers around the world through our content delivery network and through internet service providers.\u201d This is not trivial work, obviously, but it\u2019s work Netflix has been doing for two decades. It has seen every problem, come up with every workaround. \u201cSo when a member clicks play,\u201d Stone says, \u201cwe\u2019re really ready for them to click play.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you\u2019re filming and streaming live, you still have to do all that stuff and more, but you have to do it in real time. \u201cThe camera feed goes to the production truck, goes to signal ingestion, goes into the cloud to get encoded. We then have to send that through our CDN, through internet service providers, to land on your TV or your phone. And we have seconds to do that.\u201d Streaming live, even to one person, is hard. It\u2019s doable, of course \u2014 TV networks, streaming services, and tech companies do it every day \u2014 but it takes work.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Then there\u2019s the whole \u201c65 million people\u201d thing. Stone laughs when I bring it up. Netflix builds and tests and plans as much as it can, she says, both with real events and by pummeling its infrastructure with fake traffic. \u201cBut there is no lab in which you can simulate what happens to our systems when 65 million people are watching at the same time.\u201d Even on Netflix\u2019s all-time busiest days, it\u2019s not getting that kind of traffic all at once.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Stone breaks Netflix\u2019s system into two parts. It\u2019s a generalization, she says, but it\u2019s close enough. \u201cWhen you log into Netflix and you\u2019re scrolling through the homepage, and you\u2019re watching trailers and you\u2019re deciding what to watch, that\u2019s supported by AWS servers.\u201d Netflix is a huge client of Amazon\u2019s web services, which are the backbone of most of the internet at this point. It\u2019s a huge traffic burden just to have tens of millions of people flipping through the app at the same time, but AWS scales pretty well and Stone says that part of Netflix held up even during the fight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Once you press play, though, the system shifts to Netflix\u2019s own Open Connect system, which is generally considered the best in the streaming business<\/a>. Netflix invested heavily in its own infrastructure when it first started doing streaming, but, again: 65 million people. \u201cI would argue that any company would have faced challenges at this type of scale,\u201d Stone says. \u201cWe have these tight-knit connection points between our servers, Open Connect appliances, and what I\u2019ll call the last mile that ISPs give to devices. All of that was overloaded during the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Among the things you can\u2019t know until an event starts is who\u2019s going to watch, where they\u2019re going to be, and what else might be happening. The internet is a finite thing, with only so much available bandwidth in the cables that connect things; if an event is unexpectedly popular in LA, it\u2019s going to struggle in LA even if it\u2019s fine elsewhere. \u201cThink of it as the difference between a truck delivering 100 bottles of water vs. having to run a live water hose to 100 people at once,\u201d Fastly CEO Anil Dash wrote recently<\/a>. \u201cOne problem is about moving some bits from one place to another, the other problem is keeping a live stream running at high volume at a massive scale. When there\u2019s not enough water being supplied to all those hoses, everyone gets a little less.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Stone agrees the hoses are the challenge. \u201cAll of the streamers out there,\u201d she says, \u201cwe all face it: how much bandwidth is there? And are we going to need bandwidth at the same moment that many other streamers need bandwidth?\u201d It\u2019s not like Netflix can dig trenches or run more cables along your phone lines \u2014 certainly not by Christmas, anyway \u2014 so all it can do is try to optimize the system as best it can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Since the Paul \/ Tyson fight, Stone says Netflix has been trying to both increase its capacity and control the flow of bandwidth more effectively. \u201cWe\u2019ve augmented our Open Connect servers, and several of the ISPs have augmented the capacity they\u2019re bringing to the table,\u201d she says. They\u2019re particularly focused on places that were overloaded during the fight, though she doesn\u2019t specify which places those are. Internally, the team is also working on optimizing the algorithms that decide how to prioritize traffic and bandwidth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There probably won\u2019t be as many people watching football on Christmas as there were for the fight. It\u2019s possible no Netflix live event will be that big ever again \u2014 there aren\u2019t many one-off cultural moments that command an audience like that. But Stone says she\u2019s glad to have seen the system so wildly overtaxed and stressed because now the team knows what happens. \u201cIt would have taken us a lot longer to get those learnings if we were just slightly turning the dial from some of the earlier live events,\u201d she says. By throwing the lever all the way to the end, she thinks Netflix can now be ready for just about anything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Though, to be clear, even Stone won\u2019t go so far as to promise the football games will go perfectly. All she\u2019ll say is she loves a challenge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even if the Christmas games go well, the Netflix team doesn\u2019t get much of a break. On January 6th, it will stream the first episode in a new weekly series: WWE Raw, <\/em>the flagship wrestling show. Netflix bought the show\u2019s rights for $5 billion and is responsible for streaming it for the next decade. In 2027 and 2031, Netflix will also stream the FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup<\/a>. Both have big, built-in interest, and both drive big buzz around the world. They\u2019re also recurring programs, which will keep subscribers subscribed. That stuff matters to Netflix.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s also just simple math. All the most popular things on TV now are live events: sports, awards shows, that sort of thing. Those are the shows that command the highest viewership and the highest ad rates, and Netflix is now rapidly trying to build its own ad business. That\u2019s why Amazon paid for NFL rights, why Peacock went all-in on the Olympics, and why even the price of the Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Day Parade is going up. In an increasingly splintered entertainment landscape (which is, of course, partly Netflix\u2019s fault), must-see live TV is more valuable than ever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Riegg, who oversees all these content choices, is adamant that for Netflix, live and sports are not the same thing. He seems to be animated by the idea of bringing people together, of creating communal moments where everyone is watching and talking about the same thing at the same time. Netflix, of course, is maybe the company most responsible for ending <\/em>that monoculture by making huge libraries of content available to everyone, everywhere, all the time. But Riegg thinks the platform should bring some of that classic live TV energy back. \u201cRemember the Felix Baumgartner Red Bull space jump?\u201d he asks me. \u201cI remember everybody in the office was watching that \u2014 something where there\u2019s still the specter that anything can happen. We\u2019re all experiencing this at the same time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Netflix is interested in buying more of these events, Riegg says, but he also wants to create them. Which brings Riegg to his current big question: \u201cWhat is our version of Dancing with the Stars? <\/em>Or what is our version of America\u2019s Got Talent<\/em>?\u201d <\/em>That\u2019s the stuff Netflix\u2019s unscripted team is working on right now \u2014\u00a0taking familiar formats and adding in live elements. Because Netflix is so big, and so global, Riegg thinks it has a chance to do something genuinely new. \u201cWhat if we had The Voice, <\/em>and everyone around the world could opine and weigh in about who should win? That\u2019s a different level of community viewing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I mention to Riegg that I was a longtime, immensely dedicated American Idol <\/em>fan, and his eyes go wide. \u201cWe\u2019ll never see another Idol,\u201d <\/em>he says, \u201cin terms of the gap between Idol<\/em> and the second-place show. But we can certainly try to say, what\u2019s the next iteration of that?\u201d It\u2019s pretty clear he and the team have some ideas, though Riegg won\u2019t tell me what they are. We\u2019ll just all have to find out together, live.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n