For example, watching a paid soccer online broadcast – if a lot of people watch it then the quality will drop and it will start buffering and lagging. But that never happens with a soccer TV broadcast no matter how many people watch it. Why is that?
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Online broadcasts aren’t actually broadcasts
For real TV its a many to one broadcast. The TV station sends out the signal at full power and there’s no change to it if a million people tune in versus no one because its sending the signal to *everyone* regardless of if they tune to that channel
Online broadcasts are many one to one transmissions. The server has no way to just punt the bits out into the ether for anyone to find, that’s not how the internet works. If you want to watch the broadcast your computer has to talk to the server and request the packets. The server has to send the same packets to each and every connection so if there is 1000 people watching instead of just 1 the server needs to do about 1000x as much work.
Generally the servers are pretty strong but for really popular events or relatively low end streaming services the viewership can start overwhelming what the server can handle so everyone starts getting fewer packets (laggy/stuttering video) or smaller packets (lower resolution) so that the server can keep up with getting *something* to *everyone*
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