The 2026 World Cup is the largest sporting event ever staged on North American soil (six weeks, 104 matches, three host countries) and it arrives with a cybersecurity dimension that tends to get buried under the ticket and broadcast coverage.
Major tournaments have consistently attracted phishing campaigns, fake ticketing operations and credential theft, and this edition is harder to navigate than most given the sheer number of international travellers. Stadium Wi-Fi, hotel lobbies, airport hotspots: these are environments where basic network hygiene matters more than it does at home and where the consequences of ignoring it tend to show up weeks later.
More Than a Sponsorship Deal
ExpressVPN secured the official FIFA partnership against that backdrop and it is the first VPN company to hold that designation. It’s a deal that fits more naturally than it might look on paper. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, the service has spent years building a reputation as one of the stronger options for streaming specifically, consistently unblocking Netflix, Prime Video, and most major platforms that enforce geographic restrictions.
Its Lightway protocol, which is the company’s proprietary technology built on WireGuard, holds up better than most under the kind of congestion you get when tens of thousands of people are sharing the same stadium network. The infrastructure runs on TrustedServer which is a RAM-only architecture that means no data is ever written to disk and the no-log policy has been independently audited by KPMG.
The company has also been expanding beyond its core VPN offering lately. The Pro plan introduced ExpressAI which is a confidential AI assistant built directly into the app, running on encrypted enclaves with zero access to user data which makes ExpressVPN one of the first mainstream VPN providers to integrate that kind of functionality natively. The Advanced plan adds ExpressKeys, which is a zero-knowledge password manager, and ExpressMailGuard, which generates unlimited email aliases. None of that is strictly necessary for watching soccer but it signals where the product is going.
The partnership comes with a concrete offer: 80% off through June 19, bringing the long-term plan to $2.29 a month. Subscribers also get entries into a draw for 25 pairs of Category 1 tickets to knockout matches through the Final, running until July 11 with the number of entries tied to subscription length (one entry for a monthly plan, five for twelve months, ten for twenty-four).