US authorities have designated the World Cup final a Special Event Assessment Rating 1 (SEAR 1) event, the Department of Homeland Security's highest security tier, with an expanded Secret Service presence at the stadium 1. The designation was reported by broadcasters rather than announced in a first-party DHS release.
SEAR is the federal scale that determines how much national security support a public event receives. Ratings run from 5, which is largely a local policing matter, up to 1, the bracket occupied by presidential inaugurations, State of the Union addresses and the Super Bowl. A SEAR 1 rating pulls in federal air-space restrictions, coordinated multi-agency command, and Secret Service protective operations of the kind normally reserved for a protected person rather than a sporting fixture.
The presence of a serving US president at the match, rather than the fixture itself, ordinarily drives a rating of this kind. Slavko Vincic will referee under those conditions , with the closing ceremony already scheduled inside the same security perimeter . Large stadium events in the United States frequently sit at SEAR 2 or 3 without it.
