Why digital services slow down during big events - And how modern tech is solving it

"Streaming stalls during a major sports final. Payments lag on Black Friday. Apps freeze during big ticket drops. We notice these slowdowns every year, yet the reasons rarely get explained clearly. Under the hood, digital platforms face sudden spikes in demand that exceed what their systems expect on a normal day. Even strong infrastructure can struggle when millions of users hit the same service at the same second."

"According to research by Altius Labs, most slowdowns originate not from user traffic alone, but from how back-end systems coordinate, verify, and store data under extreme load. Why everything slows down during major moments When millions join a livestream or rush to buy a product drop, three things hit digital systems simultaneously: Systems that perform well under normal conditions can degrade sharply when spikes exceed their design limits. Engineers call this load concentration, and it affects every layer of an application."

"Most slowdowns begin at the server layer. Every user action - pressing play, checking out, refreshing a feed - sends a request. Under normal conditions, systems distribute these across multiple servers. During major events, requests often surge beyond what the servers can handle, leading to: Even auto-scaling systems can struggle because traffic spikes happen faster than new servers can spin up. Typical example: A World Cup final can create traffic spikes 20-50× higher than a normal day for streaming platforms."

Streaming stalls, payments lag, and apps freeze during major events because digital platforms experience sudden, concentrated demand spikes far above normal levels. Backend coordination, verification, and data storage become critical chokepoints under extreme load. Servers face overwhelming request volumes that can outpace autoscaling, while databases become the limiting factor when handling thousands of simultaneous updates. Traditional relational databases struggle with rapid concurrent changes such as inventory updates during flash sales. Load concentration can degrade every application layer, and very large events can produce traffic tens of times greater than a typical day.

Read at London Business News | Londonlovesbusiness.com