Politics and sports do not mix. That is one of the most repeated and most false assertions in history. From regional games, such as the Central American and Caribbean Games, to global ones like the Olympics or the World Cup, trying to separate politics from sporting events is a pipe dream. On the contrary, the host country’s satisfaction comes from the promised benefits that such a sporting feat could bring to the nation, especially in how it can position itself as a leader in various areas of interest such as technology, education, or as an investment destination.
Some might think that the spirits of Pierre de Coubertin and Jules Rimet would turn in their graves upon learning of the intertwining of politics and economics with sports. The reality is different: from the very beginning of their creations, political pressures were among the obstacles that had to be overcome to achieve their dreams finally.
Usually, what is most widely known is what happened at the Olympic Games, from the games organized under Nazism, where the Peruvian football team disregarded the refereeing to prevail over Austria, to the tragedy of the Munich Games. During the Cold War, it was through sports that diplomacy between the United States and China began, thanks to a ping-pong table. Likewise, the Olympics in Moscow (1980) and Los Angeles (1984) were the stage for major boycotts. Curiously, in Moscow the loudest applause went to the Puerto Rican delegation, which, driven by its sporting autonomy, decided to ignore President Carter’s call and participate in the games held in the Soviet Union.
The fusion of politics and sports in this Caribbean nation is something that deserves further study. Since its participation in the first Central American Games held in Havana in 1930, carrying a Puerto Rican flag meant going to jail, something that did not stop the island’s delegation at the 1935 Central American Games in El Salvador, where they marched with the illegal banner and chose to listen to the host country’s anthem instead of the United States’ when receiving their five gold medals. Returning to the Moscow Olympics, participation in that event, together with participation in the 1982 Central American Games in Havana, marked an internal struggle in Puerto Rican politics between those who want Puerto Rico to be integrated as a U.S. state and those who wish to maintain its identity and sporting independence. The Puerto Rican flag ceased to be illegal on December 22, 1952; until then, Puerto Rican delegations usually marched under a white flag bearing the coat of arms of the City of San Juan at its center.
If we focus on the king of sports, football, the first World Cup held in 1930 was awarded to Uruguay because it was a two-time world champion in the tournaments organized by FIFA under the umbrella of the Olympics in 1924 and 1928. However, this designation led to a European boycott, limiting the participation of countries from that continent to France, Belgium, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Fittingly, the first match in World Cup history had France as the winner, crushing Mexico’s national team 4–1. This first World Cup had the unique characteristic of being the only one in which the podium was composed entirely of American countries: Uruguay, Argentina, and the United States.
Four years later, holding the World Cup became the responsibility of Mussolini’s fascist Italy. It was there that technology began to be integrated into the event, since the tournament was considered a spearhead for showcasing national technology, with radio as the main star, setting aside Il Duce’s death threats to the Italian team should they lose the final. For the first time, radio allowed people who were not in the stadium to enjoy each play of the World Cup matches.
Even with these kinds of situations, controversy and conspiracy have been present at every World Cup. From Gardel’s visit to the two national teams that played the final at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo in 1930, to the complaints sparked by a banner about the “Argentineness” of the Falkland Islands in Atlanta during July 2026.
As I wrote more than ten years ago: Football has the special gift of making many people forget their reality for ninety minutes, transporting them to a world where the impossible does not exist and heroes are real. Stories about how football tournaments have managed to halt armed conflicts surface every four years with the arrival of the FIFA World Cup. A tournament that originated to celebrate and showcase the leading exponents of the world’s most popular sport and that, over the decades, has become a commercial display window for the world’s leading brands, but also an advertising platform for each host country. In other words, the World Cup places its host nation under the media magnifying glass of the entire planet. Since the 1950s, hosts have leveraged that attention to present themselves as leaders in broadcasting and telecommunications: from the first televised matches to the rollout of 5G and artificial intelligence. Sponsors and national champions gain publicity that speeds up the arrival of new technologies, and that accelerates adoption, in turn, accelerates innovation. The tournament compresses a decade of network engineering into a single month of peak demand, acting as a kind of indirect competitor to World’s Fairs, where technology is the main attraction.
Over the years, the increasingly central role that technology plays in the World Cup has gradually been cemented. From a simplistic point of view, the main aim was to expand the tournament’s reach by allowing more people to watch the matches and get excited with every goal. Of course, politics and surprises did not disappear. From Uruguay’s legendary “Maracanazo” in Rio de Janeiro to Germany’s controversial victory over Hungary and the memorable feat of the United States against England in 1950, the World Cup has always been accompanied by anecdotes and suspicions.
Within this context, Switzerland 1954 emerges as the first televised World Cup, with matches broadcast live to eight European countries via the Eurovision network. England, apart from a “goal” that never crossed the line, gifted the world the arrival of instant replay, which forever changed how plays are narrated and contested, eventually culminating in the adoption of VAR in 2018. Mexico 1970 was the first tournament broadcast live via satellite and in color, which finally made the Cup a truly global and simultaneous event.
After Colombia’s unfortunate withdrawal as host in 1986, Mexico once again hosted the World Cup. This time, satellite distribution of matches expanded to reach every corner of the planet. The Internet arrived at the event during the 1998 World Cup in France, along with the emergence of websites dedicated to different aspects of the tournament. The arrival of the Internet was only the prelude to what would begin to unfold in the twenty-first century.
The rivalry between Japan and South Korea in 2002 spilled over into mobile technology, with each country racing to present itself as a global leader in 3G adoption. It was not just a battle of brands but of standards: South Korea’s EVDO (3GPP2) versus Japan’s UMTS (3GPP). Meanwhile, Germany 2006, what we might call the 3.5G World Cup and the triumph of 3GPP over 3GPP2, helped lay the foundations for the development of mobile content related to the event and became the first World Cup broadcast in HDTV, an essential step in the development and diversification of revenue for FIFA. In higher-income markets, the inevitable migration toward smartphones was already evident.
The World Cup’s arrival in Africa gave technology a different role. Even though the first LTE networks had been launched the previous year, South Africa, as host, focused on promoting itself as an excellent hub for technological investment and development. While stadium networks focused on ensuring efficient connectivity for visitors and the smooth operation of logistics and security for participants and infrastructure, another consequence of the World Cup was the arrival of submarine cables and the expansion of broadband in East Africa.
A new trend, which became extremely clear starting with South Africa and is quite despicable both in its implementation and its design, emerged clearly in that World Cup and would be replicated by Brazil in 2014 and Qatar in 2022: the displacement and/or exploitation of the poorest to make room for the construction or renovation of stadiums to be used during the event. South Africa’s low profile turned Brazil into the real 4G World Cup; the country wanted to show the world that it was a technological power. Requirements for 4G network deployment were even built into the spectrum auction, giving priority to the cities that would host the 2013 Confederations Cup and then the 2014 World Cup. Brazil was also where the tournament finally took center stage on various social media platforms as a space for sharing all kinds of content. On the pitch, we saw the introduction of goal-line technology, the starting point for the layer of sensors and data that today defines refereeing, with plenty of controversy: by 2026 it will be able to detect a Croatian hair but unable to detect a collision with a cable, even if countless cameras have recorded the latter.
Four years later, FIFA seemed eager to recall its vilest past by embarking on a cycle of hosts marked by the autocratic governments that rule them. It is not enough to impose white elephants such as the Arena da Amazônia in Manaus (Brazil 2014) or the Cape Town Stadium (South Africa 2010), nor to watch as the sport gradually excludes and even causes the deaths of those who get in the way: the poorest, the residents of favelas, migrants who work to send remittances to their families, those who rarely have a voice.
Thus the 2018 World Cup arrived in Russia. This host implemented a national telecommunications program to deploy 230 sites in 30 cities, carried out by Rostec’s National Informatization Center for the modest sum of 10.4 billion rubles (around 170 million dollars in 2018). The objective was to showcase technological progress, making Russia the first pre‑5G World Cup thanks to Ericsson and MTS with Massive MIMO “5G‑Ready.” The Russian stadiums also marked the beginning of VAR, aimed at making the game fairer, or, as more than one professional footballer says, at making it easier to manipulate results.
Continuing the selection of autocratic states where the deaths of tens of thousands of migrants during stadium construction mattered little once the ball was rolling, Qatar 2022 became a showcase for 5G as a revolutionary technology enabling multiple applications that previously could only be accessed through a wired Internet connection. On the pitch, technology evolved to increase the number of cameras, incorporate artificial intelligence as a manager of various sensors, and implement biometric monitoring as a security measure for stadium access.
Finally, the 2026 World Cup was awarded to Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and wireless technology has been driven mainly by Verizon, Rogers, and Bell in the first two markets, while in Mexico a temporary spectrum allocation was granted to various operators to prevent network collapse due to the high influx of tourists. From a technical perspective, this World Cup has offered a strong example of the operation of private networks, distributed fiber, and network slicing. On the pitch, the biggest technological change has been the introduction of the referee’s body camera, providing the closest thing to his perspective on the field.
Obviously, in none of the FIFA World Cups did technology work perfectly, but they were a first step in showing thousands of people the positive functionalities that technological innovation offers. Yes, there were connectivity failures, signal loss, and varying levels of latency depending on the location of a given signal. There were also threats from immigration officials toward unwelcome visitors in the United States, and searches that bordered on the dehumanization of visitors, including, but not limited to, delegations such as Germany or Uruguay, as well as the man considered the best referee in Africa.
One question remains: How has technology impacted the FIFA World Cup? Greater match distribution and the increase in the number of connected devices have led, according to FIFA figures, to a rise in television audiences from 3.2 billion in Brazil, 3.572 billion in Qatar, and 5 billion in Russia to more than 6 billion in 2026.
The final played on July 19, 2026, ended with Spain’s 1–0 victory over Argentina. Like any final, it was steeped in controversy and immersed in parallels with past editions. One of the most curious is that it was the first time since 1930 that two Spanish‑speaking countries contested the final.
This fact would not be so important were it not for the initial prohibition of Spanish, the world’s second‑most‑spoken language, at World Cup press conferences. Undoubtedly, it was an almost shameful gesture by FIFA against a segment of the U.S. population that, regardless of their legal status, lives in fear of being mistaken for someone else and deported simply for daring to speak Spanish. Worse things have been seen, such as inventing a peace prize to reward invasions and wars.
