When the world comes to New Jersey for the FIFA World Cup in 2026, the focus will be on the matches. It always is. The crowds. The spectacle. The global spotlight.
But if you want to understand where the real risk lies, don’t look at the field. Look at the parking plan.
Because right now, there isn’t one.
Opus 2 Steps Up Its AI Game With Acquisition Of A Legal Tech Startup
With the addition of Uncover’s technology, the litigation software is delivering rapid innovation.
Fans attending matches at MetLife Stadium are being told there will be no on-site parking due to security (the perceived need to create a large security perimeter) and logistical constraints. Instead, they will be pushed to public transit or limited off-site options — including roughly 5,000 parking spots at the nearby American Dream complex, reportedly priced at $225 per vehicle. For some marquee events, even those options are already gone.
On paper, this may sound like an inconvenience. In practice, it is something else entirely: a large-scale redistribution of risk.
When you eliminate parking for tens of thousands of attendees, you are not eliminating demand. You are forcing behavior. People will still come — they will just arrive differently. They will rely on trains, buses, rideshare services, and long pedestrian routes. They will converge in unfamiliar areas, at the same times, under pressure to get in and out quickly.
Another issue with this, of course, is whether public transit and all of these alternatives can even come close to handling the expected volume of people for each of these events.
Legal Is Changing. And NeoSummit Is Where The Future Is Being Built.
Legal and operational leaders are gathering May 6–7 in Fort Lauderdale to confront the questions the industry hasn't answered—with a keynote from Amanda Knox setting the tone.
All of this is entirely guesswork at this point. And this kind of forced convergence creates predictable conditions: overcrowding, bottlenecks, confusion, and delay. And those conditions are where injuries happen.
We have seen this before. Not just at international sporting events, but at concerts, festivals, and major games across the country. The danger is rarely inside the venue. It is at the edges — on the walk in, the wait for transportation, the surge after the final whistle. It is where planning meets reality, and reality wins.
From a legal standpoint, none of this is abstract.
Event organizers and operators have a duty to anticipate reasonably foreseeable risks. When you know that tens of thousands of people will be funneled into limited transit options, you are on notice. When you price the most controlled parking option at a level that effectively restricts access, you are shaping how the crowd behaves. And when that behavior leads to overcrowded platforms, chaotic pickup zones, or unsafe pedestrian conditions, the question is not whether it was foreseeable. It is whether it was preventable.
Responsibility in these situations does not fall on a single entity. It rarely does. FIFA may be the global organizer, but local stadium operators, municipalities, transit agencies, and private contractors all play a role in how people move safely to and from the event. When something goes wrong — and history tells us that, at this scale, something eventually does — liability will be shared, examined, and contested.
New Jersey adds another layer of complexity. Claims involving public entities, such as transit systems, are governed by the New Jersey Tort Claims Act, which imposes strict notice requirements and limitations. For injured individuals, that means the window to act is short, and the legal terrain is anything but simple.
All of this underscores a point that should not be controversial: transportation is not a side issue. It is a core safety issue.
If the plan is to move tens of thousands of people without giving them a clear, accessible, and reasonably safe way to arrive and leave, then what we are looking at is not a solved logistics problem. It is an unmanaged risk.
The World Cup will bring energy, attention, and opportunity. It should also bring serious, transparent planning around how fans will move through the environment safely. Not just inside the stadium, but well beyond it.
Because when you design an event where 80,000 people have no clear place to park and no seamless way to disperse, you are not just testing infrastructure.
You are testing the limits of responsibility.
And those limits tend to get defined the hard way.
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.