The Legal Gray Zones of a Three-Nation World Cup: Who Is Liable When Something Goes Wrong?

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By Michael J. Epstein

 

On Friday, FIFA will release the schedule for FIFA World Cup 26, as it is officially known, and trigger a wave of excitement across the United States, Canada, Mexico and the entire soccer-adoring world.  

It also quietly opens one of the most complex liability landscapes ever created for a sporting event. Most World Cups involve a single host nation with a single legal system. This one will be governed by three. That reality requires a level of cross-border legal coordination that does not currently exist.

The moment an incident occurs, whether it involves fan safety, transportation, data privacy, or ticketing, the threshold question becomes which law applies. In almost any other setting, the answer is straightforward. In 2026, it will depend on the location of the harm, the nationality of the injured party, the contractual relationships behind the event, and the extent to which FIFA’s host city agreements supersede or interact with local regulations. That matrix alone can alter outcomes in ways fans, and even many operators, are not prepared to understand.

The differences begin with the basic concept of duty of care. The standard owed to spectators in New Jersey is not the same as the standard owed in Ontario or Jalisco. Tort law frameworks diverge across borders. Stadium operators and municipal authorities use different safety codes. Medical response requirements, crowd management guidelines, alcohol policies, and policing strategies are not harmonized. A fan who suffers an injury in Canada may have an entirely different legal pathway than someone harmed in the United States, even if the facts of the incident are identical. Those inconsistencies become more significant when millions of spectators will be moving across all three countries over a short period of time.

Transportation is a similar problem. Consider the simple scenario of a city contracting with a shuttle operator to move fans between a U.S. venue and a Canadian travel hub. A collision on one side of the border may be litigated under one set of rules, while a collision on the other side may require an entirely different liability analysis involving differences in insurance mandates, tort thresholds, and procedural requirements. Nothing about that is intuitive for the ordinary traveler who purchased a ticket and boarded what appears to be a unified, FIFA-sanctioned service.

There is also the matter of ticketing. World Cup tickets involve a multi-layered chain of contracts involving FIFA, national federations, local partners, and multinational vendors. If a dispute arises about seat access, resale restrictions, biometric requirements at stadium entry, or a fraudulent transaction, the governing terms could be drawn from one of several jurisdictions. The consumer will almost certainly not know which until a problem arises.

Data privacy may be even trickier. Fans will be required to submit personal information to secure tickets, cross borders, access stadiums, and register for digital services. The United States does not have a federal privacy law. Canada does. Mexico has its own framework. FIFA’s own policies layer on top. An incident involving leaked or mismanaged data may cross all three systems, each with different enforcement mechanisms and remedies. The result is a privacy regime that looks unified to the public but is fragmented in practice.

FIFA’s role complicates everything. Host agreements often create special legal zones around event venues and fan areas. These agreements may reassign operational duties, transfer risk to local governments, or require indemnification for certain categories of claims. The text of those agreements is not always harmonized across countries. A clause that shields a municipality in Mexico might not exist in the version negotiated by a U.S. host city. That discrepancy could determine who pays when something goes wrong.

The fact that the World Cup is a private event with enormous public impact only heightens the stakes. Governments are pouring billions into stadium renovations, transit upgrades, and security planning. Once matches begin, the legal responsibility for fan safety shifts between private operators, local agencies, and FIFA affiliates, sometimes in the same venue on the same day. When the lines of authority are blurred, every delay in identifying the proper defendant becomes another obstacle for anyone seeking accountability.

The challenge is not that the legal issues are insurmountable. The challenge is that they have not been addressed with the urgency the tournament requires. Coordinated cross-border safety standards, unified emergency protocols, transparent versions of host city agreements, and clarified ticketing terms would reduce uncertainty for everyone involved. None of this undermines the excitement or the economic promise of the tournament. It simply acknowledges that the law has to keep pace with the event’s scale.

A three-nation World Cup is a remarkable achievement. It will showcase a sport that has finally found a permanent home in North America. It will also test the strength of our legal systems, not individually, but collectively. Fans should not need a law degree to understand who is responsible for their safety, and they should not confront a jurisdictional maze when something goes wrong.

The schedule is set. The countdown has begun. The legal framework, however, has not caught up. That work must start now, because once the matches begin, the questions of liability will not wait for the final whistle.

 

About Michael J. Epstein

Michael J. Epstein, a Harvard Law School graduate, is a trial lawyer and managing partner of The Epstein Law Firm, P.A., a law firm based in New Jersey.