Since June 11, all eyes have been on the field for the 2026 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup. The United States has hosted the majority of the matches, with over 1 million travelers pouring into 16 host cities. As fans focus on the game, a troubling reality persists across the country—human trafficking.
Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery and a violation of human rights, generating an estimated $245 billion dollars a year globally. It occurs when force, fraud, or coercion is used to control another person for commercial sex or labor against their will.
For the first time in World Cup history, each host city in the United States was required to publish a Human Rights Action Plan. This requirement was put in place due to widespread criticism of human rights violations during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
The purpose of the action plans is to ensure host cities have tactics in place to protect vulnerable communities during the event. Human trafficking is addressed in the action plans, featuring strategies for prevention and resources for survivors.
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, sex trafficking accounts for the most reported cases in the United States.
Major sporting events have often prompted an uptick in sex trafficking awareness campaigns and investigations, with media highlighting the results of mass arrests.
“Sporting events don’t cause trafficking, but economics drives exploitation.”
However, nonprofit leaders are pushing back on the narrative that these events are the driving force behind sex trafficking
“ We’ve heard people talk about how the Super Bowl is the biggest trafficking event, and it’s not necessarily a fact that trafficking increases or decreases,” Yazmen Vafa, executive director of Rights4Girls, told NPQ in an interview.
While major sporting events may not cause sex trafficking, they offer a timely moment to examine the social and economic forces that drive this underground economy.
California: The Eye of the Storm
California has the most reported cases of human trafficking in the country. Since 2007, the state has reported 16,780 cases and identified 31,764 victims. The majority of the reported cases are sex trafficking incidents involving women as the victims, though trafficking impacts people from all backgrounds.
This year, the Bay Area has implemented anti-trafficking measures in light of multiple major sporting events, including the Super Bowl and the World Cup.
During a pre-Super Bowl FBI sting operation in San Jose, 11 arrests were made, including a middle school assistant principal for allegedly attempting to pay for sex from someone he believed was a 13-year-old boy.
Jennifer Lyle is the executive director of MISSSEY, an Oakland-based nonprofit addressing the sexual exploitation of youth. Lyle discusses how the San Jose case challenges the myth that traffickers are merely coming from outside of the country to commit these crimes.
“They really try to frame the traffickers as ‘illegal aliens.’ What we know is it’s Jeffrey Epstein, it’s families and next-door neighbors,” Lyle told NPQ.
This reality calls for communities to take a closer look at an industry that is hiding in plain sight.
Director of the South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking (SBCEHT), Sharan Dhanoa, told NPQ, “The reality is that no city has the capacity to respond to safety issues with only a law enforcement approach. So when we talk about safety, it’s a community safety approach.”
While targeted arrests make headlines during major sporting seasons, the pervasive nature and close proximity of human trafficking remain in the fine print.
Beyond the Headlines: Economic and Social Disparities
Major news coverage tends to highlight isolated events of human trafficking in a specific area. However, anti-trafficking experts speak to a more complex reality.
“Policies that impact eating, survival, and housing—that’s where we see the changes. The Super Bowl, not so much.”
“Sporting events don’t cause trafficking, but economics drives exploitation,” Sharan Dhanoa, director of the SBCEHT, told NPQ.
Nonprofit leaders like Lyle point to social and economic disparities that can cause a rise in human trafficking. She reflects on the 2025 federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
“That’s when we saw a significant increase in need. Policies that impact eating, survival, and housing—that’s where we see the changes,” Lyle explained. “The Super Bowl, not so much.”
Economic and social disparities create power dynamics that enable the exploitation of people. Yet misconceptions of the trafficking market can deflect from these dynamics.
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Misclassifications and Criminal Consequences
One of the key factors that can cause misconceptions about sex trafficking is language. Language shapes public perception of who is considered a criminal versus a victim. This can influence the reporting of cases, data collection, and human trafficking policies.
For example, when the terms “sex trafficking” and “prostitution” are used interchangeably, it can distort the lines between being a victim and being criminalized under the law. The usage of “child prostitute” speaks to this point since, by definition, there is no such thing as a child prostitute. If a minor is involved in commercial sex, it is automatically considered sex trafficking.
When victims of sex trafficking are misclassified as prostitutes, they can face greater risks of being criminalized and excluded from receiving resources as survivors. The Rights4Girls Criminalized Survivors Report refers to this discrepancy as the “Abuse to Prison Pipeline.”
“Although these are legally distinct concepts [sex trafficking and prostitution], the line between the two is very blurry, and their clinical needs are identical,” Vafa with Rights4Girls said.
The Survivors Report further explains that victims can face a “catch-22”—whether they choose to act in self-defense to escape their abuser or comply with them out of fear, either decision can lead to criminal charges.
When discourse about survivors of abuse centers on criminalization rather than support, it can distract from the economic and social disparities that create conditions for human exploitation. Further, it deflects from spotlighting the people upholding the system of abuse.
The Hidden Side of the Market
Mainstream discussions about human trafficking tend to focus on the relationship between the trafficker and the victim. This allows a key driver of the market to remain in the shadows and unaccountable to the public: the buyers.
As Vafa noted, “It is very important to shine a spotlight on the role that [the buyers] play, especially in light of this cultural reckoning we’re having with the Epstein case.”
“We’re seeing survivor programs closing down. We’ve seen organizations reduced to a small capacity, which means survivors will not be served with critical support like housing, case management, therapy, and legal services.”
For the World Cup, Rights4Girls launched a national billboard campaign to “put sex buyers on notice.” The organization put up billboards across six major host cities, including Atlanta, Dallas, Kansas City, Boston, Seattle, and the NYC-NJ region.
“I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years and have met hundreds of survivors. The vast majority of survivors are Black and Indigenous, and the majority of their sex buyers are White men,” Vafa told NPQ.
Vafa’s experiences are supported by a report published by Rights4Girls, Buyers Unmasked. The report unpacks how women and girls tend to face greater criminal charges than buyers, and that arrests disproportionately impact Black survivors.
Nonprofit leaders are advocating to expose buyers, hold them legally accountable, and shift power dynamics that maintain structures of exploitation.
While major sporting events trigger law enforcement to ramp up sting operations and arrests, if adequate legal consequences and policies are not permanently put in place, buyers can continue to cause harm with impunity.
Lyle from MISSSEY also notes how those in positions of power have not been held accountable to the law, further weakening the threat of legal consequences for sex crimes.
“I’m skeptical if any john or pimp is going to take threats of legal retribution seriously when we see at the highest levels of government that there’s nothing done about sex exploitation.”
Temporary Response Versus Permanent Infrastructure
The prevalence of exploitation and human trafficking in the United States calls for a national paradigm shift.
Federal funding cuts to essential resources and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives speak to this point, as support for survivors and anti-trafficking advocates plummets.
As Karen Romero, co-executive director of the Freedom Network USA (FNUSA), told NPQ, “ We’re seeing survivor programs closing down. We’ve seen organizations reduced to a small capacity, which means survivors will not be served with critical support like housing, case management, therapy, and legal services.”
The World Cup may have prompted agencies to develop Human Rights Action Plans and increase trafficking investigations, but survivors need more.
“They see the endgame as arrests. Catch this bad guy and get this girl off of the streets, right? That’s not the endgame,” Lyle from MISSSEY told NPQ.
For survivors, Lyle says, “The end game is ‘I am thriving in life, I feel good about being in the world, and I get to participate in the world.’”
Even though the World Cup is coming to an end this week, there is an opportunity for the public to rally behind survivors and anti-trafficking advocacy work. A long-term communal investment will be essential to sustain social and economic change.
