Entertainment Strategy Guy has a post about viewership for competitions that were streamed online with a section about Netflix’s “Unfinished Beef” hot dog eating contest between Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi on Labor Day. The audience was too small to make any streaming ratings chart.

So that’s the real sports. Now let’s talk not-so-real sports: Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef, Netflix’s latest foray into sort-of sports specials. This year, instead of competing in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Competition (due to a sponsorship dispute), Joey Chestnut signed up for a Labor Day special on Netflix.

It didn’t make any of the ratings charts I track. It didn’t make Netflix’s global charts, either, so it either had less than 2.5 million hours or less than 1.5 million views global.

And I didn’t hear anyone talking about it either. The usual argument for these specials is all the free earned media that Netflix can get, but this rebuts that. I did a Google search a week later, and there were very few articles about Joey Chestnut setting a new record. There were a handful, mostly from the trades or Netflix itself.

I have not seen any official audience statistics from Netflix for “Unfinished Beef” and they have announced no plans for any future eating contests.

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Jodi Walker wrote a long article (or short book?) for Ringer.com about the “Unfinished Beef” matchup between Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi that was streamed on Netflix on Labor Day. There will probably not that much new in it for people familiar with competitive eating other that some behind the scenes information about how the event was put togther. Nicole Haimes, director of the 2019 documentary about the Chestnut / Kobayashi rivalry “The Good, the Bad, the Hungry” was also the executive producer of “Unfinished Beef”.

But there was still one speed bump: “When negotiating for this whole thing, Chestnut and I with Netflix, we were talking about the possibility of doing this on Fourth of July,” Kobayashi tells me. That would have meant not competing in the Nathan’s competition in 2023, which Joey refused to do (62 hot dogs in 10 minutes). “So I thought, well, if he doesn’t have respect for me, then I don’t think I want to compete against him,” says Kobayashi. Haimes fortunately managed to rope him back into the deal with Netflix by suggesting that they couldn’t “let the perfect get in the way of the good.” Kobayashi relented and even said that Chestnut could compete in the Nathan’s contest in 2024 if he wanted. They would simply find a different (slightly less patriotic) date for their one-on-one. “But then he was banned from the Nathan’s competition, ironically,” Kobi smirks.

After MLE contracts worked against them for years, a contract dispute finally worked in their favor. Kobi and Joey were at Netflix. And people were excited.

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Joey Chestnut has defeated Kobayashi 83 hot dogs to 67 to set a world record for a 10 minute hot dog contest.

In the first undercard, Matt Stonie defeated three aquatic Olympians (Ryan Lochte, Ryan Murphy and Max Irving) in a 3 minute wing eating contest, 53 wings to 36.

Some links about Unfinished Beef
Decider has an interview with Takeru Kobayashi
Brobible has an interview with Chestnut and Kobayashi
NYTimes article

Netflix has an instagram post about the Chestnut / Kobayashi rivalry with two major errors: Kobayashi did not reverse in the 2007 Krystal Square Off, he missed it due to “jawthritis” and Kobayashi did not compete in the 2010 Nathan’s finals, he attended as a spectator and was arrested afterwards.

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Here are the all time head to head results for Joey Chestnut vs. Takeru Kobayashi. They have faced 15 times from 2005 to 2010; Kobayashi finished ahead in 8 of the matchups. (This excludes the 2005 US Open of Competitive Eating, a 32 entrant tournament won by Kobayashi in which he did not face Chestnut.)
Read the rest of this entry »

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TVLine announces that there will be two undercard competitions for “Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef” that will be streamed on Netflix from Las Vegas on September 2: Matt Stonie and Leah Shutkever will face off against opponents who have yet to be named. This will be Matt Stonie’s first public eating competition since a Draft Kings event in April 2021 and Leah Shutkever’s first public competition since the Highway 55 burger eating contest in June 2018. The broadcast co-hosts will be actor/comedian Rob Riggle and WWE Hall of Famer Nikki Garcia. Cari Champion and Chris Rose will be the announcers for the competitions.

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The Guardian has a long interview with Takeru Kobayashi about facing off against Joey Chestnut in a hot dog eating contest on Netflix on September 2. He believes the event will be his final competition.

Will September’s bout with Chestnut be Kobayashi’s last? He has to believe it will be. “Unless I think each match is my last one, I will not be able to perform at my peak level.” But he is enjoying the thrill of competing again. “When you do something for a really long time, you start to lose the magic that you felt initially,” he says. “This has really brought back the feeling of how much fun it is to push yourself.”

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Netflix announced that Joey Chestnut will face off against Takeru Kobayashi in “Unfinished Beef”, a matchup that will be streamed on Labor Day, September 2. The competition will use beef frankfurters. Hollywood Reporter has an article about the program with the following quote from Takeru Kobayashi:

Retiring for me will only happen after I take him down one last time. This rivalry has been brewing for a long time. Competing against Joey live on Netflix means fans all over the world can watch me knock him out.

flashback July 2022 In an interview on the Pardon My Take podcast, Joey Chestnut expressed a desire to compete against Takeru Kobayashi.

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