A method and apparatus are provided for handling events received at a media streaming server. Server sockets configured to receive events are divided into collections and registered with a polling object. Each collection shares a processor thread for detecting events. Each socket is associated with an event consumer object that is notified when an event is received at the socket. The event consumer objects invoke task objects to handle the events. Task objects are queued in a task queue and execute using a pool of processor threads. Event consumer objects are derived from an abstract base consumer class that defines a common interface. Subclasses of the base consumer class are configured for different types of events that may be received (e.g., connection requests, media streaming commands, media data, media stream quality reports). Specific event consumer objects are instantiated from the subclasses to provide implementations of the common interface.