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Well, the FIFA twenty twenty six World Cup kicking off next week across the county. Tickets I did not. I okay, I don't know that I could afford them.
I know somebody who's going to five games. Somebody, I'm not joking. A friend of mine is going to five games. He's been saving up.
Did they mortgage did he mortgage his.
He said, I remember I was seven years old the last time this was in the US, in North America. I am going to go. He's going. He's going to four games that he paid for and one for work that a client has taken him to.
I don't I get it if you really were to Seattle, La, New York all over the country also going to games are of course, our our team here at Bloomberg, who covers sports. Bloomberg's Vanessa Prodomo Maglione will be at some of the games as well, and she's been reporting out on what to expect some of the controversy because it's not inexpensive to go see some of these games, and there's a lot of issues at play in including security,
so Vanessa joins us. Vanessa, of course She is Bloomberg New Sports business reporter and host of the Bloomberg Business of Sports podcast back at Bloomberg headquarters in New York City. Also with us as Dan Arnold, he's senior vice president National Operations at the managed security services provider Proto Security. He joins us from Omaha, Nebraska. Dan, great to have you here with Tim Vanessa and myself. Security is a big issue. You've been in the industry for like a
quarter of a century. I'm not trying to date you or age you or anything, but you've seen a lot. You understand you've worked with corporate security. Put the World Cup Games here in North America, here in the United States. Give us some context. How do you characterize this event in terms of span, difficulty and heightened concerns?
Keryl's a great question, and Carol, Tim Vanessa, thanks for letting me participate. Carol, you can join me in Kansas City if you want to come watch MESSI here in a couple of weeks.
I would love to.
Yeah, let's do it. You'll sit right beside me. I'm going to be in the stand to chairing with the others. But sitting in those stands, you know, I think that's that's really where your question and how do you get safely to those stands? This is like eleven sites across
the country. Right in the United States alone, it's eleven simultaneous Super Bowls, and the challenge of security for those environments eleven at one time is a major strain on public and private, municipal and federal security partnerships.
Dan, you know, I think the interesting thing here is how differently each city is handling it. We've had a lot of cities come out against the funding that wasn't released right away, But how are different cities, you know, in Kansas City, how is it being handled differently than New York. How are each city and the size of those cities go into play here.
Yeah, the funding certainly is controversial and some challenge, but I know what the local folks are doing, and you get private private security companies and the public law enforcement, the municipal leadership. I know, well over a year right, there's been very detailed planning and those groups are very
tight and very coordinated. And while they always will want more funds, setting up communication understanding where forward operating centers will be understanding how you're going to use technology in and around the venues, different routes, different patrols. You know, how are we going to get people safely in and out of these environments? So the coordination has been very strong and it's been very exciting to watch these private public partnerships.
And just so we know, I mean, because of how differently everyone's handling it is it up to each city to decide how much they want to invest into security. I mean every city. Like we said, it's different, the MetLife. Getting to MetLife is completely different, and having to deal with potentially a NIX NBA Finals overlap there is going to cost a little bit more and have a little bit more people. So how are the budgets decided there and how do they spread out this money?
Yeah, certainly with deep coordination their standards and minimum standards for safety and security. But these venues have great and strong security operations teams, right they support NFL events and other events. So these venues have a lot of expertise and experience and understand the funding it does take to
provide safety and security for these events. But it's important that it's not one plan fits all, and I think that's what's been very good about the local jurisdictions and the local venues to say roots like you mentioned to get the met life or get to Arrowhead. Wildly different,
wildly different needs in each community in each market. And so again I think the funding has been appropriate, could always be more, but they've been able to design good, safe, solid security plans, you know, in all these local markets that really fit the local market.
Dan, I don't want to obviously don't want to give away any secret sauce here, but in an age of where we're seeing drones deployed in ways that was kind of work, kind of unthinkable in the last few years, it does seem like sort of airborne threats are potentially some of the biggest challenges around the country. How do you think about that in sort of drone technology.
Yeah, I think with drone technology, with the advancements of you know, some of the AI with camera systems and operations in security space is being it has become much cheaper, you know, less expensive to maybe cause some chaos or cause some frustration. Right with with drones and other things. People most of the time in good nature want to have cool videos and something for socials, but they don't understand the disruption it causes, and so it is certainly
part of the plans. Right. There is counterintelligence teams, there are teams with technology trying to monitor. There are flight restrictions around these facilities, and all those are in place to try to prevent but it doesn't mean it's one hundred and so the teams have response plans and have been working hard understanding that some of these technologies and the cost of these technologies have made it a little bit easier to causal the disruption.
Dan, One thing I want to ask you about that I've been hearing about because of the inflated prices on some of the transportation, is that some fans are going to try and find ways to walk to the stadiums. How do you plan for something like.
That, Well, it's it's certainly depends on the market. Right, a little harder to probably walk the met life than it is some others. But you have major issues with all the just transport in general, right with the public
transportation routes like you mentioned. But as we're talking about pedestrian traffic, the choke points and guide paths that you need to be able to do that safely and securely not disrupt traffic is highly challenging, and so they are working very hard to allow pedestrians and others to get to these facilities. It is not the easiest path, it is not usually the common path of these facilities, but there are i'd say centrific, centrific levels of security right
there are layers and layers of security. They start it very very close to the facility, and so as you go out.
Further around, Dan, we got to run. We got to run. So apologize Dan Arnold and of course our own Vanessa Perdomo Maglione. This is Bloomberg