Managing Security at the World Cup

In this chapter we discuss the challenges of planning and managing security at recent Football World Cups. In the context of increasing global security challenges and escalating security expectations, we consider why World Cup security transformations have occurred and their consequences. The security approach taken to protect the World Cup differs from standard FIFA football matches as the risks are far higher. As Jennings and Lodge (2009) have noted, the Football World Cups ‘represent a site for all kinds of organisational and technical failures, combined with elevation of threat level from terrorist incidents … due to the global profile of events’ (p. 1).