[jon-wood]

Its difficult, but not impossible by any stretch - the BBC stream the Olympics live, and have done for several iterations now, without seeming to have any major problems.

They've got an even harder problem, in 2012 they were providing simultaneous live streams from 24 separate events at times. Sadly I can't find any statistics on just how many viewers watched something like the 2012 opening ceremony, but I'd be surprised if the numbers weren't comparable to the Super Bowl.

[kristianc]

The 2012 Olympics were an absolutely huge undertaking - the BBC went as far as creating a mock Olympics to test traffic and server load and at its peak shifted 2.8 PB of data a day. When Wiggins won gold, they were shifting 700GB/ps. No doubt things have come a long way since then - but I get the impression it really was no mean feat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/2db7f335-660b-32...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/digital_olymp...

[boulos]

You meant 700 Gbps not 700 gigabytes (5.6 Tbps). Both are impressive, but the latter would have been fasincating.