On the creepier aspect of issues, this yr’s World Cup will even go down as one of the crucial tightly surveilled within the sport’s historical past. This yr, each attendee getting into a stadium shall be tracked by a system of 15,000 cameras geared up with facial recognition expertise. The surveillance equipment, paying homage to the tech utilized by extra infamous Clearview AI, is reportedly managed by way of a technical hub referred to as the Aspire command and management heart. That command heart will seat a row of technicians monitoring and analyzing these digicam feeds.

The surveillance system expands previous stadium confines and also will embrace close by practice and bus stations. Overheard, drones will reportedly fly overhead to estimate crowd dimension.

“What you see here’s a new customary, a brand new development in venue operations, that is our contribution from Qatar to the world of sport,” Niyas Abdulrahiman, the occasion’s chief expertise workplace, mentioned in an interview with AFP. “What you see right here is the way forward for stadium operations.”