About one month out, the behind-the-scenes work that makes coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup possible is beginning to swing into high gear.
One critical component is the coordination of limited spectrum to support all of the wireless mics, IFBs, cameras and other devices used to bring matches to a worldwide audience that’s expected to reach nearly 6 billion people.
Last week, the Federal Communications Commission designated Sinclair vice president of spectrum policy and engineering Louis Libin as special frequency coordinator and RF spectrum manager for the 2026 FIFA World Cup (June 11-July 19).
In this Q&A, Libin discusses the challenges of coordinating RF use at the 11 World Cup venues in the United States, the effect of having President Donald Trump as chair of the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026 on frequency coordination, an ongoing effort by the North American Broadcasters Association to establish a point person at the FCC for spectrum use during special events and which procedures World Cup-approved broadcasters must follow at the venues.
(Editor’s note: In an email after the interview, Libin said requests for frequency and entry into the FIFA RF portal, as well as answers to questions about the RF schedule, should be directed to Juan Morales, head of spectrum for FIFA, at juan.morales@fwc2025.org.)
(An edited transcript.)
TV Tech: Louis, the World Cup is being played at 11 U.S. venues. You’ve been the FCC-designated frequency coordinator for many major events over the years, but 11 different venues has to be a unique challenge. How are you approaching those challenges?
Louis Libin: I work with the people who are going to be at the venues. There’s a structure created. Any kind of RF problems are handled by a local manager who deals with the frequency coordinators. If a problem needs to be escalated, then a regional manager gets involved.
Hopefully, we have an organization in place that will work sort of automatically. We tried something like this for the FIFA Club World Cup tournament last year.
TVT: To what degree will the local Society of Broadcast Engineers frequency coordinators be used in this structure?
LL: I don’t know the exact numbers, but about half.
TVT: Fox has the broadcast rights to the World Cup in the U.S. I am guessing the biggest share of frequency coordination will be devoted to managing the spectrum needs of all of the media coming from around the world to cover the event.
LL: That’s correct. It's interesting because frequency coordination at the same stadiums, where football games are played, is tight. But it’s not as tight as it is for an event like the World Cup or an Olympics.
There’s so much planning that’s done beforehand [for those events] that there’ll be no what we call “Game-Day Coordinators,” like for the NFL. There will be no game-day coordination happening. There’s game-day enforcement and game-day stickering of equipment that’s already approved.
It’s a little bit of a simplified RF coordination process. I don’t want to say it’s easier. Nothing’s easy. But it’s done beforehand, and it's done very formally.
It works out because there is so much going on at the event itself. For example, the one I’m closest to is at MetLife Stadium [renamed New York New Jersey Stadium for the World Cup].
I can't even tell you how many [channels will be used], for two-way communications, IFBs. It’s an unbelievable number of pairs and single 450 [MHz] and 455 [MHz] channels, almost every one is in use. And I’m able to reuse them, even though it’s just across the water from the city [the stadium is in East Rutherford, N.J., some 10 miles the Hudson River from New York City]. But I’m able to successfully reuse them, and a lot of it has to do with aiming antennas away from the city.
TVT: That crowded RF environment—and others around the country where the World Cup is being played—must require Special Temporary Authorizations from the FCC. Is getting STAs for coverage for the different venues difficult?
LL: It’s very difficult. But the STA process is a little bit easier for us because of the involvement with the administration. We have the president, who is chairing the World Cup. [President Trump is chair of the White House Task Force on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, not the chair of FIFA.]
TVT: Does that trickle down to making your life a little easier?
LL: Well, what it trickles down to is the FCC wanting to make sure that what we do goes through speedily. So, it’s very good.
It’s interesting because I’m working with NABA [the North American Broadcasters Association] as well.
We have a new project: To work with the FCC to get an office of special events. I would love that, but it won’t happen. That literally requires an act of Congress—you know, the cliché—but it does require an act of Congress.
So, what we’re trying to do is work with the commission to get a point person at the FCC for special events. And we're having a lot of luck [with] the OET [the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology] because it really transcends many, many bureaus.
STAs come from all over the place. They can come from wireless [the Wireless Bureau], from all over the place.
So—and this has nothing to do with the World Cup—the FCC is very, very cooperative. It’s not an official proceeding yet. But why wouldn’t they want to make it easier for us as well as easier for themselves?
They put in some very interesting ideas. For example, they would like data to be collected, so that they’ll learn more about events. So, the next time there’s an event, we don't have to start from scratch. I thought that was a great idea.
TVT: So this will not be an office. How do you think it will be structured?
LL: Right, it won’t be an office. It will be a process. I’m not even sure which office it will be with. But it’ll be a process where the bottom line is we’ll have a number to call, and we’ll have a person to talk to.
If there’s a challenge, if there’s a problem, if on event day somebody needs to do something, there’s a number to dial.
I love this because we have this in other countries. You know, in the U.K., in Canada, it’s a much simpler process that’s geared towards events and temporary use.
TVT: Can you describe how some of these event-day problems arise?
LL: You know, when we apply for STAs, there are actually a few different ways of applying, and it might be experimental, even though it’s not always exactly experimental.
This could be a great way of, No. 1, educating people and, No. 2, having everyone go through the same process.
Today, I could go to an event and there could be three different STAs that came through three different [FCC] bureaus, and we won’t know about it.
TVT: That’s surprising.
LL: People can show up with equipment that’s licensed on some kind of, let’s say, experimental [use STA], but not from OET, and I wouldn’t even know about it.
TVT: So just to be clear, you said this new role at the FCC would deal with the authorizations related to special events like the World Cup or the Olympics, but not more regular sorts of events such as a Sunday NFL game.
LL: No, it could be that, too. I’m not speaking for the NFL or any other league. But for example, this weekend there’s a NASCAR race at Watkins Glen, N.Y. [Sunday, May 10] or next week the PGA Championship. That’s going to be in Philadelphia, but typically a golf event or even NASCAR racing is in an area where there’s not much RF.
All of a sudden, it becomes a mini RF city. That’s how much RF there is. So, I would say that for golf events, for NASCAR, for racing events and all these kind of events where you wouldn’t necessarily think [there’s RF congestion], it could be a big help because of where these events are located.
Sometimes you go to the Daytona 500, and you’re 100 yards from the Daytona International Airport.
TVT: Getting back to the World Cup, I imagine the amount of RF congestion will vary dramatically from venue to venue.
LL: There's definitely a difference between venues. They’ll pose their own challenges. You know, Seattle is varying terrain. You know that is good and bad.
Miami is Miami, and so it’s flat. Signals go forever over there. That also means you’re receiving a lot of signals. You go to MetLife Stadium, and you’re looking straight at the transmitters from the city. They’re all big challenges, but each one is unique.
TVT: To what degree has LTE and 5G relieved some of the congestion for video that traditionally was transmitted on Broadcast Auxiliary Service (BAS) channels in general and specifically as relates to the World Cup?
LL: We’re still at the beginning of it, and it’s still a challenge and it still doesn’t have the same reliability right now. In other words, it’s still emerging, but I could see it coming more and more into use.
But even the COWs [Cell on Wheels], when they come to a temporary event, have to be set up. You would expect them to be set up, and everything is great.
We’ve found that oftentimes, including at recent events, they have different challenges themselves. They set up in one location. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile [COWs] are within 100 feet of each other. That’s kind of not great.
That said, they all have their links that are attaching them to someplace else—on 3.9 GHz, for example. Are they as clean as they should be? Well, they should be because they are specific to them.
Did they mount their antenna in the right direction? That’s never perfect, and it’s only a temporary event. So, we often have to live with that. It’s not terrific. And that impacts the reliability of those systems operating in the cellular bands.
I have a feeling that all of the new Wi-Fi—in the 6 GHz and 7 GHz bands—coming in now are encroaching on the massive amounts of wireless microwave channels that broadcasters use for events. I’m not saying that in an FCC/legal manner, but I feel they are encroaching.
There’s only a limited amount of shifting and playing Jenga with the channels that we can do. Eventually, something’s going to have to give and unfortunately, Wi-Fi is going to win, because it’s ubiquitous.
TVT: What do broadcasters who have followed the procedures to use spectrum at World Cup venues have to do when they arrive on-site? Do they check in? What is the procedure?
LL: When they get into the venue, if they're already approved—and they would have a piece of paper that says they’re approved to get inside the venue—then they come in through one entrance where they’ll follow signs.
There will be a desk and a couple of people. The frequency coordinator and another person will check equipment and put approved stickers from FIFA onto equipment.
If they’re not approved, or if a foreign broadcaster comes in, then they can stay in the parking lot and use their wireless mics. Nobody can stop them.
But if they are approved to get inside the venue, they’ll follow signs to the desk.
TVT: You have a lot of experience serving as the FCC-designated frequency coordinator for major events. If you look back over the political conventions, sporting events and other major events covered, has coordination gotten any easier over time?
LL: No, RF coordination is becoming more and more complicated because everything is wireless now and everybody wants to be wireless for everything.
The only thing that is helping in terms of frequency coordination is that many ENG crews are now using Wi-Fi/2 GHz devices. That’s a big help.
