I helped provide webcasts last year for Boilermaker, Midwest, and IRI. I can tell you that the biggest obstacle is a server with the necessary bandwidth. Sure, Servermatrix has servers with a 100mb pipe (we used ours to provide the IRI webcast), but as pointed out already, a large 3-day event would chew through more bytes than most plans offer. This is why NASA's help is so important (they provided the servers and bandwidth for Midwest and Boilermaker).
Server horsepower is not an issue. The server is simply replicating streams coming from the event site and redistributing them out to all the clients. That uses very little CPU power.
Having an internet connection at the site is a problem, but usually a solvable one since most facilities will have internet available. It's mainly a coordination problem with getting in touch with the right people to get access to it.
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Originally Posted by Stephen Kowski
possibly used some more advanced technology other than RealMedia that could offer some alternatives as to quality vs. bandwidth
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I'm not sure why everyone rags on Real so much. Years ago their player was intrusive and took over all your file associations, but now it seems to be quite good. And their compression algorithm is at least as good as anything else you'd want to use for streaming video (I personally believe it looks quite a bit better than Windows Media at the same bitrate). Additionally, all of the software necessary to provide a Real stream is available free which makes life easier.