With fewer than 100 days until kickoff of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a small New England town has exposed a legal vulnerability that tournament organizers across North America should be paying very close attention to.
Foxborough, Massachusetts, population roughly 19,000, is threatening to deny the entertainment license required to host World Cup matches at the stadium that will temporarily be known as “Boston Stadium.” The issue is not whether the town wants the tournament. By most accounts, it does.
The issue is who pays for security.
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Local officials say they need approximately $7.8 million to cover policing, fire protection, equipment, and other public safety obligations during the tournament. That money was expected to come from federal funding approved last year as part of a broader security package tied to the World Cup and other national events.
But the funding has not arrived.
The delay has left Foxborough officials asking a very simple question: If the money does not come through, who is legally responsible for covering the cost?
The answer, at the moment, appears to be unclear.
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The Hidden Complexity of World Cup Hosting
Unlike many international sporting events, the World Cup in the United States is not managed through a single contractual structure that clearly assigns operational responsibility to one party.
Instead, hosting responsibilities are distributed across a complicated network that includes FIFA, local organizing committees, stadium operators, municipal governments, state authorities, and federal agencies.
Each entity plays a role. Each assumes certain obligations. But those obligations are often defined through overlapping agreements rather than a single comprehensive framework.
When everything works as intended, the system functions.
When funding or timelines break down, however, the gaps become visible.
Foxborough’s dispute illustrates exactly what those gaps can look like in practice.
Local public safety officials cannot wait until the final weeks before a global sporting event to determine whether they have the personnel, equipment, and infrastructure necessary to protect hundreds of thousands of visitors. Security planning for events of this magnitude begins years in advance.
Police chiefs and fire departments do not operate on theoretical funding commitments. They operate on budgets.
Without financial certainty, municipalities face a serious legal and fiscal dilemma.
Municipal Licensing Is a Powerful Legal Tool
What makes the Foxborough situation particularly significant is the leverage that local governments possess in these circumstances.
Municipalities control the permits and licenses required for large public gatherings. Those approvals cover emergency services plans, safety protocols, crowd management, and a wide range of operational requirements.
Without those licenses, events cannot legally proceed.
This means a local government can effectively stop a global sporting event simply by refusing to approve the necessary permits.
Foxborough officials have emphasized that they do not want to block the tournament. But they have also made clear that they cannot responsibly approve the event without clear financial guarantees.
From a legal perspective, that position is entirely defensible.
Municipal leaders have fiduciary and statutory obligations to protect local taxpayers and ensure that public safety agencies are adequately resourced. Hosting matches without guaranteed reimbursement for millions in security costs could expose the town to significant financial liability.
That risk is not hypothetical.
The Liability Question No One Wants to Discuss
Security funding disputes are not merely budgeting issues. They are also liability issues.
If a municipality approves an event without adequate staffing or equipment because funding commitments failed to materialize, the legal exposure could be enormous should something go wrong.
Large-scale sporting events carry inherent risks. Crowd control failures, emergency response delays, infrastructure breakdowns, or security breaches can quickly generate litigation involving multiple layers of responsibility.
In those situations, plaintiffs’ attorneys do not focus on organizational charts.
They follow the money.
Questions quickly arise about who approved the event, who controlled the safety plan, who assumed responsibility for emergency services, and whether adequate resources were in place.
If those answers point back to a municipality that authorized the event despite unresolved funding gaps, the legal consequences could be severe.
That reality explains why local officials in Foxborough are drawing a line now rather than hoping the funding dispute resolves itself later.
Why Other Host Cities Should Pay Attention
Foxborough’s dispute is not simply a local disagreement. It is a preview of a broader structural issue.
The 2026 World Cup will be played across sixteen host cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Each of those jurisdictions relies on its own network of public safety agencies, permitting processes, and funding mechanisms.
If federal funding delays continue — or if reimbursement structures remain uncertain — other municipalities could find themselves confronting the same question Foxborough now faces.
Do they assume the financial risk of hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world?
Or do they use their licensing authority to demand financial certainty before approving the event?
Neither option is attractive.
But local governments ultimately answer to their residents, not to FIFA.
A Warning Before the Tournament Begins
It is highly likely that Foxborough will ultimately approve the license required to host World Cup matches. The economic and reputational stakes are simply too large for all parties involved to allow the event to collapse over a funding dispute.
But the fact that the dispute exists at all should be viewed as a warning.
Major international sporting events depend not only on stadiums and television contracts but on clear legal structures that define responsibility for security, liability, and public safety.
If those structures break down — even temporarily — the consequences can ripple far beyond a single host city.
The World Cup is supposed to be the world’s game.
But when it comes to public safety, local governments hold the whistle.
And if the legal and financial questions are not resolved in time, they also have the power to stop play before it ever begins.
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.