Azure SignalR vs Web PubSub for a real-time live score website – which one fits better?

Hi everyone,

I'm building a live football score website from scratch as a personal project, mostly using AI-assisted coding. The core requirement is pushing score updates, match events (goals, cards, substitutions) and minute changes to visitors in real time without them refreshing the page.

I'm considering Azure for the real-time layer and I'm trying to decide between Azure SignalR Service and Azure Web PubSub. Traffic will be uneven: quiet most of the week, then spikes of concurrent users during big matches.

A few questions:

1. Which service handles sudden traffic spikes more cost-effectively?

2. Is Web PubSub simpler if my backend isn't ASP.NET?

3. Would polling an external score API every few seconds and broadcasting changes be a reasonable architecture, or is there a better pattern?

Any experience or advice would be appreciated. Thanks!