Data defense: How Babel Street helps secure high-profile sporting events

The FIFA Club World Cup is here. Sixty-three matches played by 32 teams in a dozen venues across the United States — from Miami to New York to Los Angeles. Enthusiasm is high. Big money is at stake: teams will split more than $1 billion in prizes, with the series champion standing to win $125 million.[1]

Along with the joyful hoopla comes the threat of danger. Calamities such as the Boston Marathon bombing, the near riots at the 2024 Copa América semifinal[2] in Charlotte, N.C., and the 2025 terrorist attack before the Sugar Bowl[3] in New Orleans all illustrate the need to safeguard high-profile sporting events.

A combination of physical security measures and open-source intelligence (OSINT) is needed to protect players, spectators, and venues. Through social media monitoring, semantic understanding, and other capabilities, OSINT technologies provide the type of situational awareness that law enforcement and security professionals need to better identify threats, and to prevent those threats from being realized.

While protection against terrorism and mass shooting is paramount, the customizable search capabilities of OSINT platforms also surface less terrifying but still-significant security vulnerabilities, such as:

• Has the news media or an overenthusiastic fan announced at which hotel certain players are staying? OSINT platforms can alert security teams to the leak. These teams can then decide whether hotel security needs to be enhanced, or if players should relocate.
• Has the president of a Latin American country announced plans to attend his favorite club’s match? Security teams can plan an appropriate executive- protection strategy.
• Is a heat wave predicted for Miami on game days? Security teams can coordinate with municipal emergency medical services for an increased on-site presence.

OSINT platforms in action

Well aware of the potential for chaos at the Club World Cup, Federal agencies such as the FBI, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security have worked with regional and local and law enforcement to plan match security.[4] They know they must leverage every physical and digital tool at their disposal to protect athletes, spectators, and venues. And they must provide this protection at three points on the timeline: before, during, and after a match.  

The importance of physical security measures (including perimeter fencing, metal detectors, visible security personnel, K9 officers, crowd-management processes, and emergency-response processes) cannot be overstated. While OSINT won’t replace established security measures, it can enhance them.

Before the match, law enforcement agencies and security firms can use OSINT solutions to monitor social media, online forums, news outlets, and other sites for indications of planned attacks or disruptive behavior. This is important because, broadly speaking, mass shooters and some terrorists tend to announce their plans online.[5]

Often these threats are blunt and unmistakable in their intent. But the social media monitoring capabilities of the best OSINT platforms can also help security professionals find more subtle indications of potential violence. How? A forger may advertise the sale of fake credentials, such as those that give legitimate stadium staff access to team-only areas. Certainly, those interested in buying these credentials may be over-zealous fans intent on meeting their idols. They may also be terrorists who could place bombs near stadium supports for maximum carnage.  

Social media monitoring during the match can help with crowd monitoring — providing insights into the mood of spectators, who often post during the game. This information can help security teams anticipate crowd management challenges and adjust security and response plans accordingly. In addition, guests may spot and post about signs of trouble before security professionals become aware of them.  

OSINT platforms can also help security teams spot spectators engaging in crime.  

Consider this example: Am really enjoying my view from seat 15B. ❄️❄️❄️❄️ #ClubWorldCup #MajorArena. Snowflake emojis are code for cocaine. The poster could be letting people know where to buy the drug

Security remains a concern after the match. Perhaps fearing security at the venue itself, terrorists and others may believe the parking structure is the perfect spot to stage an attack. An argument brewing among opposing fans may spill over into violence outside the arena. OSINT can help security teams prevent these crimes, and more quickly respond to any bad acts that do occur.

How Babel Street can help

The AI-powered Babel Street Ecosystem delivers advanced analytics solutions that transform diverse datasets into actionable insight. Babel Street Insights provides persistent searches of thousands of sources of publicly available and commercially available information (PAI/CAI). To provide security professionals and law enforcement with the insight needed to secure venues and events, our technology scours data sources published in more than 200 languages, then translates results into the user’s language of choice.  

Information sources include more than a billion top-level domains; commercially available sources; and real-world interactions generated on chats, social media posts, online comments, and message boards. Within each source category, there is a range of platforms. Insights covers it. Our technology examines both mainstream news sources and blogs. It studies established social media platforms, emerging platforms, and fringe or far-right/left platforms — including the type of distasteful message boards where violent intent is often announced. It also examines both text-based platforms and photo/video-based platforms.  

Furthermore, Insights thoroughly searches the dark web — or web sites that are inaccessible by standard search engines. Because the tools used to access the dark web ensure anonymity, it is a hotbed of illegal activity. Dark-web search capabilities enable investigators to scan posts and other information they wouldn’t otherwise be able to see. Coalescing and collating data found in Insights searches can help connect screen names to real-world entities.

Insights also offers the semantic understanding so vital to event security. Insights looks beyond words used to decipher the intent of those words. A fan posting, “My club tore up Metropolitan Arena last night. Shout out to the whole team for making it happen! 😊 😊 😊” is very different from a disturbed individual posting “I’m going to tear up Metropolitan Arena tonight. I can’t wait to hear the team shout out🔫.” Semantic understanding can also help organizations understand new representations of words. It can search for emojis meant to evoke violence: skulls, bombs, and swords among them.  

Security professionals know to search for threats of violence at Club World Cup games. But they might not always know which search terms are trending, and why. Here, too, Babel Street Insights can help. Our word clouds provide visual representations of the game-related words and phrases used on social media, with most-often-used words appearing in larger, more prominent type. If security officials see the word “storm” often used in relation to a match, they can dig deeper. They may find fans worried about the weather. Alternately, they may find the word “storm” being used to describe a planned protest or attack.  

Visualization of conversation spikes also proves useful. Babel Street Insights shows when, and how much, people are posting about a venue or match. Suppose security professionals find an unusual amount of chatter on a non-game day. With a few clicks, they can learn what that conversation is about. Maybe news of an injured player has set social media abuzz. Or maybe an armed gunman has attacked a pre-match event.  

A proven track record

Babel Street regularly works with governments and private security firms worldwide to secure high-profile events, including sporting events. Before the 2023 Formula 1 Grand Prix in Las Vegas, a private security firm used Babel Street technology to uncover and mitigate risks to the venue, drivers, and spectators. Babel Street helped this firm identify a group of individuals, based in Las Vegas, who planned to disrupt the event.  

More recently, Babel Street worked with a large metropolitan police force to ensure public safety during a political convention. Faced with more than 50,000 attendees, planned protests, and a complex urban environment, the police department needed a comprehensive solution for rapidly gathering OSINT. Babel Street enabled investigators to significantly reduce the time required to gather and analyze massive volumes of data, enabling them to shift focus from data collection to decision-making. This in turn helped law enforcement stay ahead of emerging incidents and address potential threats.  

Securing high-profile sporting events from terrorism, crime and everyday vagaries is a challenging process. While physical protection measures remain important, Babel Street technology provides law enforcement and security professionals with a digital edge: the opportunity to uncover, and plan for, disruption before it can start.  

Endnotes

1. Pathak, Manasi, “FIFA Club World Cup 2025: Teams, full schedule, prize money, how to stream,” Al Jazeera, June 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2025/6/12/fifa-club-world-cup-2025-teams-format-explainer-venue-final-messi-ronaldo

2. Collins, Ben, “Copa America – the party that almost became a tragedy,” BBC Sport, July 2024, https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c729vgyz9rdo#:~:text=Uruguay%20players%20then%20clashed%20with%20Colombia%20fans,Colombian%20and%20Uruguayan%20fans%20were%20not%20segregated.

3. Feurer, Todd, “Notre Dame vs. Georgia in Sugar Bowl postponed after deadly New Orleans truck attack,” CBS News Chicago, January 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/notre-dame-georgia-sugar-bowl-new-orleans-truck-attack/

4. Gelston, Dan, “FIFA president Infantino promises ‘the world will be welcomed’ as Club World Cup preps for US debut,” Associated Press, April 2025, https://apnews.com/article/fifa-club-world-cup-infantino-09882372dccd58cfbf0068a9feeb6cda

5. Peterson, J., Densley, J., Spaulding, J., & Higgins, S., “How Mass Public Shooters Use Social Media: Exploring Themes and Future Direction,” Social Media + Society, accessed Julne 2025, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231155101