As a striker steps up to take a decisive penalty at the Fifa World Cup, another race is unfolding far from the stadium. Within seconds, footage from the pitch is transmitted through fibre-optic networks, processed by cloud platforms.
Artificial intelligence analyses the data, while interconnected data centres route the footage to billions of screens around the world. Behind the scenes, cybersecurity teams are working to prevent hackers from disrupting the world’s biggest sporting event.
For football fans, the experience feels effortless. A goal appears almost instantly on televisions, smartphones, and tablets, accompanied by live statistics, player tracking and instant replays. But behind that experience is a vast digital ecosystem in which every millisecond matters.
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“It is a complete ecosystem. It is a journey from the pitch to the screen,” Jeremy Deutsch, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at Equinix, told Khaleej Times.
He said today’s sporting events rely on broadcasters, internet providers, cloud platforms, and interconnected data centres working together to move huge amounts of information across continents in real time. “If any part of that supply chain breaks, you don’t get the experience,” he said. “You don’t want to watch a penalty five minutes after it happens.”
Deutsch described data centres as the “kitchen” of the digital world, where internet providers, cloud platforms, and content services come together before broadcasts are delivered from facilities closest to viewers, helping minimise delays even when millions tune in simultaneously.
Artificial intelligence has become equally central to the viewing experience. Beyond helping power technologies such as the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), AI analyses player movements, ball speed, possession statistics and other live data that now form part of modern football broadcasts.
But while billions of fans focus on the action on the pitch, cybercriminals are watching, too. “Where you see a crowd, you will also find criminals,” said Dr Claude Fachkha, cybercrime expert and associate professor at the University of Dubai.
According to Fachkha, global sporting events create attractive targets because they combine massive online audiences, valuable digital infrastructure and millions of financial transactions within a short period. “Attackers are after money, personal information or simply the opportunity to damage an organisation’s reputation.”
Among the biggest threats are distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks designed to overwhelm online services, fake streaming websites created to steal passwords or payment details, phishing campaigns targeting eager fans and attempts to disrupt the digital infrastructure supporting live broadcasts.
“People are excited. They want to watch the match immediately, so many click the first streaming link they find without checking whether it is legitimate,” Fachkha said. “That is exactly what attackers are counting on.”
He said cybercriminals often imitate legitimate broadcasters or streaming platforms, luring users to convincing fake websites where malware can be installed or sensitive information stolen.
The challenge for broadcasters is not only stopping attacks but ensuring viewers never notice they happened. “If a live broadcast goes down, people immediately switch to another platform,” Fachkha said, explaining why availability is one of the industry’s highest priorities during major sporting events.
To prevent disruptions, broadcasters and technology providers build several layers of resilience into their infrastructure. If one server is overwhelmed or compromised, traffic can be automatically redirected to backup systems through load balancing, allowing streams to continue with little or no interruption.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly helping security teams respond faster. Instead of relying solely on engineers monitoring systems manually, AI continuously analyses network traffic, detects unusual activity and flags suspicious behaviour in real time.
“AI doesn’t get tired,” Fachkha said. “It can monitor systems 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” He cautioned, however, that human oversight remains essential.
While AI can rapidly identify anomalies, it can also generate false positives by flagging legitimate activity as malicious, or false negatives where genuine threats are missed. “You still need people making the critical decisions.”
Fachkha also noted that cyberattacks are not always aimed at stealing information. Some are designed simply to hijack attention by briefly replacing legitimate broadcasts with unauthorised images or messages, damaging trust in the platform even if engineers restore services within seconds.
Looking ahead, he expects AI to become even more deeply integrated into cyber defence, helping security teams anticipate attacks before they happen rather than simply responding after the fact.
For Deutsch, the rapid growth of AI is also reshaping the infrastructure needed to support global events, increasing demand for highly connected data centres capable of processing and distributing enormous volumes of information with minimal delay.
As AI, cloud computing and streaming continue to evolve, experts say the technology powering global sporting events is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and increasingly invisible.
Every pass, every save and every goal may be decided on the pitch. But ensuring billions of fans can witness those moments without interruption is a game of its own, played across thousands of servers, countless kilometres of fibre-optic cables and security operations centres working around the clock, long before the final whistle blows.
Source: Khaleej Times