In 2026, the FIFA World Cup will bring over 100 highly-anticipated soccer matches throughout North America, with 78 of them taking place across 11 U.S. cities. Add the 2028 Olympics and the nation's 250th birthday celebrations, and public safety agencies face an operational challenge unlike anything they've encountered before.
"From a complexity standpoint, it's just from sustained operations, it's going to be really challenging," said Tom Adams, director of public safety for DroneShield during a recent Commercial UAV News webinar. "It's not just the games themselves. There's going to be coverage of a lot of the fan event areas around the stadiums as well."
Adams joined Michelle Duquette, founder of 3 MAD Air, and Jason Day, deputy director of training for DRONERESPONDERS and manager of the Texas Department of Public Safety UAS program, for a recent Commercial UAV News webinar exploring how agencies are preparing for these high-profile events as commercial and recreational drone activity continues to surge nationwide.
The Importance of Collaboration
The panelists emphasized that successful UAS operations at major events depend on coordination between federal, state, and local agencies, but that collaboration doesn't always come easily.
Day pointed to Texas as a model, where a formalized statewide working group under the DRONERESPONDERS banner has been operating for over four years. With Texas hosting more World Cup matches than any other state, those existing relationships will prove critical.
"The only way to work with other agencies is to have those contacts—what we call the hugs and high fives—and know who to get on the phone," Day said. "We get more done behind the scenes than in all of the official meetings that take place to coordinate all these events. And that's the important part because in the real world, when you're really there at the event, that's the coordination you actually have."
But Day acknowledged that challenges emerge at leadership levels, particularly around funding allocation. "Everybody has the same goal, but sometimes agencies are going to do what's best for them in that situation," he said. "Luckily, the people who are actually out doing all of those operations are not those same people."
Last year, FEMA awarded $250 million in counter-UAS grants to World Cup host sites, enabling agencies to purchase detection and mitigation technology many couldn't previously afford. But the funding revealed as many problems as it solved.
"It's been a great thing, but it's also been a very bad thing," Day said. Vendor supply chains are struggling to meet the surge in orders, and within states, disagreements over fund distribution have created friction between agencies that otherwise collaborate well operationally.
More fundamentally, the money isn't nearly adequate for the coverage required. Day noted that World Cup preparations extend far beyond stadium perimeters to include practice fields, fan zones, and surrounding areas, across multiple jurisdictions that each need their own systems.
Data Sharing
Perhaps the most significant gap identified by the panelists is the absence of a national database for counter-UAS detection data. Currently, if one agency detects a drone at a stadium in Houston, there's no way to know if that same aircraft has been spotted at other venues across the country.
"If we see a drone at a game in Houston, we can then look up to see if that same drone has been detected at any of the other event sites—and that does not exist," Day said. "That would have been a really good bucket of money to have."
The challenge is complex, with technical, legal, and commercial hurdles. Federal data collection and sharing rules weren't designed for the volume of information modern detection systems generate. Vendor contracts may prohibit data sharing, and companies offering detection-as-a-service have business reasons to maintain separate ecosystems.
"Everybody thinks that data sharing is a good idea, but it's also a bad business practice," Day said. "How we find that balance is really what a lot of us are working really hard on."
Duquette suggested a model similar to ASIAS, the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing system used by airlines and the FAA to track safety trends without attribution. But she acknowledged the drone community hasn't yet developed the same level of trust with regulators.
"We should be looking at a way to collect what the safety pieces of information are, what are the metrics, and be able to apply that to security in the same way," Duquette said.
The Safer Skies Act, signed into law late in 2025, expanded counter-UAS authorities to state and local law enforcement, a significant step forward after seven years without relevant legislation. But Adams cautioned that change won't happen overnight.
Agencies must have personnel trained and certified through the FBI's National Counter-UAS Training Center before deploying advanced detection and mitigation technologies. Training classes have begun, with priority given to personnel supporting World Cup and America 250 events.
"I don't anticipate that it's going to be any different than how DHS and DOJ are operating now," Adams said. "These technologies are deployed for certain dates, times and locations to protect certain designated critical assets. It's going to be a very well-managed process."
Adams expects a "whole of government" approach involving DOJ, DHS, FAA, FCC and potentially the Department of Defense as policies and procedures continue to develop.
Building for Sustainability
Duquette stressed that agencies should view their World Cup preparations as infrastructure investments that extend beyond the events themselves.
"The event is the hot button, but this infrastructure that they're putting in place, the practice that they're putting in place, all of the capabilities that they're building for this event needs to be done with an eye towards sustainability after the event," she said. "That's how they're going to maximize their money, by ensuring that they have something that's durable that can continue after the event all goes away."
All three panelists emphasized that counter-UAS operations at major events remain an evolving challenge without established playbooks.
"This is a new and emerging security threat," Adams said. "There are really no experts out there. We're all learning. We're all part of this journey. And don't be afraid to jump in and be a part of the conversation."
These are just a few of the topics that were touched on during this panel. The entire webinar can be viewed for free by filling out the short registration form at the link below.
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