A decade of major events, and a rising security challenge.
Unmatched in terms of reach and never short of spectacle, major sporting events bring some of the best opportunities for brands and businesses to connect with a global audience and impress VIP clients. Sports fans are already counting down to the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, the 2030 FIFA World Cup across Spain, Portugal and Morocco and the steady stream of Commonwealth, continental and world championships in between. But even before the starting whistle sounds, organizations looking to make the most of these moments face intense pressure, unfamiliar environments, compressed timelines and the unforgiving glare of public scrutiny.
Meeting that pressure takes more than a security plan on paper. Protecting people, assets and reputation across multiple venues and host cities, often simultaneously, demands an operation that can flex from quiet, steady-state monitoring to full major-event surge without ever losing sight of the picture on the ground. And as the action ramps up, intelligence and on-the-ground execution needs to function like a successful team, moving as a single unit rather than two disconnected streams.
Why intelligence and operations must work together
Our approach to major event security hinges on a constant feedback loop. While intelligence sets the operating picture, it’s always evolving. As teams move across cities, an unexpected road closure, checkpoint or gathering feeds straight back to update our continuous assessments, so we sharpen focus before the next move.
Two functions keep that exchange running:
- Protective Intelligence provides continuous assessment of the threat and operating environment. This means direct liaison with venue operators, transportation hubs, event authorities, and local government. We sit in on official security planning forums, ensuring plans are built on a current, accurate picture rather than a static assumption.
- Operational Security is the on-the-ground execution: journey management for traveling teams, site security, personnel protection and the ongoing coordination of local and regional resources that cover multiple cities simultaneously.
At the center of this model sits a dedicated Global Risk Operations Center (G-ROC), fusing the two functions so that intelligence shapes operational decisions in near-real time, and field observations sharpen the intelligence picture as an event unfolds. This feedback loop, not either function alone, is what makes the model work, even on the most high-stakes of match days and through the celebrations or commiserations afterward.
Proven under the most demanding conditions
Control Risks' confidence in this model is grounded in direct experience gained during major-event conditions. As an embedded security partner to a global broadcaster across two consecutive FIFA tournaments, the Confederations Cup and World Cup, we embedded a security director and manager, a purpose-built G-ROC and integrated protective intelligence and operational teams covering more than 400 personnel. This included senior executives and high-profile on-air talent moving acrossmultiple host cities. The programme required integrated planning, intelligence collection, journey management, personnel protection and operational coordination throughout both tournaments.
The lessons that engagement produced continue to shape how we secure major sporting events:
- Continuous liaison with venue operations, transportation authorities and event officials kept planning grounded in an accurate, live picture of the environment. This is a discipline that scales directly to any multi-city tournament format.
- Journey management and site security were delivered without interruption across every host city, for the full duration of both tournaments, demonstrating the model's endurance across back-to-back major events.
- The G-ROC maintained a live feedback loop between intelligence and field teams, allowing routing and staffing to be adjusted dynamically as conditions changed. This mechanism is essential for coordinating security around any large-scale, multi-venue event and adapting to changing circumstances and sudden disruption.
- Integrating the broadcaster's own corporate security function directly into reporting and decision-making, rather than running it as a separate channel, proved essential to client confidence. This lesson is now built into how Control Risks structures every major-event engagement.
Why this matters now
With the 2028 LA Olympics and the next wave of FIFA World Cups already on the horizon, the organizations planning for them need a partner who has run this model not once, but across consecutive major tournaments. For organisations preparing for future events, success often depends on building a security model that can adapt as quickly as the environment around it.