I couldn't say how close they are to getting that working - nor if it even is possible - because I don't work on that specific side of things. But I do know there used to be multicast networks over the internet back in the 90s (IIRC David Bowie even streamed one of his concerts over it) so it strikes me as a solvable problem.
However multicast struggles over wifi and 4g.
A CDN edge box in each exchange would probably solve the problem.
Broadcast television isn't particularly unusual, surely. Millions of people watch live, primetime TV every day.
However the use case of live sport - especially football in the uk - is massively different. This means the platforms have to scale to 20 million plus live streams (that's say 100tbit and 5 second latency) for a once in 4 year event.
> It's instant
It isn't. There are still latency delays with digital encoders, transmitter hops, etc even with OTA signals. It's just the equipment has gotten so good over the years that the latency has been pushed right down but it did used to be a lot worse. The same will happen with IP streaming given time.
> scales infinitely
It doesn't. You need geostationary satellites / multiple transmission towers, and all that only provides you a finite number of channels. In fact digital streams are actually much cheaper to scale up, which is why so many broadcasters are moving into this territory (and why I currently have a job)
> kind of beautiful simplicity, technically speaking
Superficially yes. But if you spend any amount of time around OTA broadcasters (as I have) you'll see there is a hell of a lot of complexity hidden from sight. In fact since OTA broadcasts are still digital streams served from content stored in digital formats, a lot of the technology used for internet streaming is the same for OTA broadcasts. So there is an argument for the simplicity of just serving that digital stream via IP rather than radio waves (or are you suggesting we go back to analogue as well? Because that also introduces a lot of complexity but of a different nature, like having to giant robotic cabs filled with hundreds of magnetic taps that all have to be wound to the right point; and a dependency on the postal service delivering those tapes since you now cannot just download assets from the content owners).
I'm not saying there isn't a lot of new complexity with IP streaming but I do think it's more pronounced because:
1/ we work in IT so follow the technology more closely than we do for OTA broadcasting
2/ it's still a relatively young industry so there are a lot warts that haven't been cleaned up (much like how OTA broadcasting used to be a lot less polished when the technology there was still evolving).