FIFA will digitally scan all 1,248 players at the tournament to create personalised 3D avatars for semi-automated offside technology.1 Scans take one second per player. The system was tested at the Intercontinental Cup in December 2025, with Lenovo providing the hardware and Hawk-Eye Innovations delivering the VAR system. No federation has publicly raised questions about player data consent.
22MAR
FIFA scans 1,248 players for 3D offside
1 min read
05:50UTC
Every player at the tournament will be digitally modelled in one second. No federation has asked about data consent.
SportDeveloping
Key takeaway
FIFA will 3D-scan every player for automated offside calls, with no federation publicly raising data consent questions.
Deep Analysis
In plain English
To make offside decisions faster and more accurate, FIFA will create a digital 3D model of every player at the tournament. Each player stands in a scanner for one second before the tournament; the system then uses that model to automatically judge offside calls during matches. The technology itself sounds impressive and solves a genuine problem (slow, disputed VAR offside calls). The question nobody seems to be asking publicly: who owns these 3D body scans of over 1,200 players, and what can be done with them after the tournament?
What could happen next?
- Risk
No public consent framework means players' 3D biometric data could be retained, licenced or used commercially by FIFA or Lenovo after the tournament.
Post-2026 · Medium - Precedent
Mass biometric scanning of athletes as a condition of tournament participation sets a template that other sports bodies will consider adopting.
2027 onwards · High - Opportunity
Accurate semi-automated offside could reduce match stoppages and disputes, improving the viewing experience for the 48-team expanded format's larger fixture volume.
June-July 2026 · High
Sources:AI News / Lenovo
First Reported In
Update #3 · USA beaten 5-2 at World Cup host venue
AI News / Lenovo· 29 Mar 2026
Read original →Causes and effects
This Event
FIFA scans 1,248 players for 3D offside
The most radical officiating technology deployment in World Cup history will model every player's body in 3D for real-time offside calls, with no public discussion of player data consent.
Different Perspectives
Council on Foreign Relations
CFR's analysis identified 18.75% of the 48-team field facing access barriers — the only available quantification after the State Department admitted it has none. The explicit contrast with South Africa 2010's visa waiver for all ticket holders positions the US as a regressive host by historical standards.
New York commuters / Assemblyman Bhalla
Bhalla framed Penn Station's closures as a class issue: 'For the 99 percent that can't afford to attend the games, it would be nice to at least know how you're going to get home from work.' Eight closures lock 650,000 daily commuters out for tournament traffic, with one on a Monday rush hour.
French Football Federation
The FFF called an 11:00 CEST press conference for 28 July, at its Paris headquarters, following an extraordinary executive committee meeting, at which Zinedine Zidane is expected to be presented as head coach succeeding Didier Deschamps. As of this writing no communique confirms the appointment, contract length or start date.
Morocco
Morocco is pushing for the 2030 final at its Grand Stade Hassan II in Casablanca, a planned 115,000-seat venue that would be the world's largest football stadium on completion. The venue is contested by a Spanish petition for the Santiago Bernabeu, and FIFA has fixed neither the venue nor the tournament's proposed 64-team format.
FIFA
FIFA's first tournament report, published 27 July, itemises nearly 300,000 accredited personnel, 73,700 security staff and 300,000 square metres of custom-grown turf, with no revenue or cost figure attached. As a Swiss association answering to its own Congress rather than a treasury, FIFA has followed the same operational-before-financial sequence it used after Qatar 2022.
Javier Tebas / La Liga
La Liga president Javier Tebas said on 21 July that FIFA's system is rotten from the root and that Gianni Infantino's time as president has, in his words, concluded. Tebas has no vote in FIFA's process, so days after the IOC declined jurisdiction over a separate ethics complaint, he used the only instrument he has.