The State Department’s Secret Playbook For Using Sports To Advance Trump’s Agenda

Maybe the State Department should call itself the Sports Department.

President Donald Trump has kept most of Foggy Bottom’s diplomats out of the loop on major global crises, relying instead on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, his small leadership team, and a few special envoys. But the State Department is finding itself on the front lines of an unexpectedly thorny geopolitical challenge: reconciling Trump’s restrictionist views on immigration with his desire to host a successful World Cup.

The United States’ role as a co-host for the world’s dominant sporting event is offering the department a chance to prove it matters, according to interviews with department officials and documents obtained by POLITICO. The documents include a “Sports Diplomacy Playbook” laying out how the country should use mega-events like the World Cup and Olympics to advance a mix of soft-power and foreign-investment aims, along with some of Trump’s social-policy priorities.

“State has a very important role to play, especially from a foreigner’s perspective,” said John Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama, one of 48 countries sending teams to the tournament.

Many U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide are beefing up staffing to help process visas for incoming fans, and are developing a new World Cup-specific visa processing system to prioritize ticket holders for consular interviews. At the same time, the State Department is asking other countries to share information on so-called soccer hooligans so it can deny them visas, a current and former State official said. The two were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

“The people at the State Department are going to do their best to rise to the challenge, but they've got two audiences,” said Gerald Feierstein, a former senior U.S. diplomat whose positions included ambassador to Yemen. “They've got the foreign audience, where the desire is going to be to roll out the welcome mat. The other audience is this xenophobic administration that just looks around the world and sees lots of people that they don't like and don't want to see come here. That's the tightrope the State Department is going to be walking.“

When asked for comment, the State Department spokesperson’s office referred to remarks Rubio made late last year, in which he extolled his department’s efforts to dramatically reduce the visa wait times for people planning to attend the World Cup.

Despite that, he said, “our advice to everybody is if you have a ticket for any of the games, you need to apply if you haven’t done so as soon as possible. Don’t wait till the last minute. Your ticket is not a visa.”

Bans for some fans

While some countries have hordes of fans pursuing tickets and visas, the big challenge for diplomats is not the numbers. Instead it's the many rules and regulations that Trump has imposed that make the visa process far more complicated than it was just over a year ago.

Trump has imposed executive orders blocking travel from nationals of more than three dozen countries, including four which have qualified for the World Cup, with different levels of restriction. Travelers from Iran and Haiti, for example, are subject to a June 2025 ban, which includes few exceptions. The other two, Senegal and Ivory Coast, are subject to a more recent, looser order that took effect this month.

Both travel bans grant a blanket exemption for players and team staff attending the World Cup and Olympics, although those exceptions are far from absolute. Players, coaches and other team staff would still have to meet standard guidelines. For instance, a soccer coach suspected of ties to a group the U.S. considers criminal or terrorist could still be denied a visa.

Iran “is going through major, major changes right now as we speak, so that'll be a very different picture come the time of the kickoff,” said Andrew Giuliani, head of the FIFA White House Task Force, whose members include Rubio. The administration is “actively and dynamically looking at the situation,” Giuliani continued.

Some governments want to send their sports officials and athletes using official or diplomatic visas because those people often are on the government payroll. But U.S. officials are supposed to reject those applications “because their purpose of travel is really not an official governmental mission,” the State official said.

The administration has also imposed new fees on travelers, up to $15,000 visa bonds, from some countries, including World Cup competitors Algeria and Cape Verde. Consular vetters also may have novel grounds on which to deny applicants, including having posted social media comments deemed antisemitic, supportive of terrorism, or hostile to U.S. “citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.”

FIFA, the international soccer governance body that oversees the World Cup, has always maintained the position that it does not expect host countries to change their immigration or vetting processes for its quadrennial extravaganza. Organization officials confirmed FIFA has no plans to challenge Trump on visa and immigration issues. Soccer officials have, however, shown they are willing to wage their own diplomacy to balance FIFA’s global constituency with Trump’s America First policy choices. The organization alerted host cities of expected travel bans before they were announced by the White House, and worked to coordinate between Iran and the State Department when the country struggled to get a delegation’s visa applications approved for the World Cup draw hosted in Washington in December.

Beyond the World Cup and Olympics, the secretary of State has been granted authority under the travel-ban order to designate any “other major sporting event” for the same exemption.

Rubio issued such a waiver last August for a team from Venezuela to join the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It is unclear after the U.S. military operation that ousted Venezuelan autocrat Nicolas Maduro whether a similar accommodation will be made for the World Baseball Classic this March, when Venezuela is scheduled to play four games in Miami.

“We understand that every visa decision is a national security decision. So there is a reason why the president and Secretary Rubio have put out strict guidance on that,” Giuliani said. “We want to be as welcoming as possible, also not turning a blind eye to the fact that bad actors can end up coming in from different countries, or might have huge overstays.”

Heck no to hooligans

The State Department’s increased consular staffing is likely to continue well past the World Cup and at least through the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The department’s World Cup-specific visa processing system — called FIFA Pass — is expected to go live by the end of the month.

The State Department is working with Customs and Border Protection to secure lists of known soccer hooligans from other national governments, according to the former and current State officials. Hooliganism, the label applied to fans who disrupt matches and engage in crime sprees, sometimes in an organized fashion, has been an extensive problem for several countries competing in the World Cup, including Greece, Egypt and Turkey.

Argentina has been open about sharing its lists of such fans with the United States prior to major soccer events. And, when asked about hooligans, Colombian Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez told POLITICO in an interview that Bogota would share any information the U.S. needs to “protect its citizens, its country” so long as international law is respected.

In a statement, CBP declined to get into specifics about hooligans, but said it uses a many layered vetting process to “identify potential threats before travelers arrive in the United States.”

A ‘playbook’ for all the games

State Department leaders have made it clear to its rank-and-file through cables, emails and other communications that they have to help ensure that the World Cup in particular is a success.

“The messaging we get is that this is a national priority,” the current State official said.

A nine-page “Sports Diplomacy Playbook” distributed to State employees in December lays out how the department should approach what the administration is calling a “Decade of Sport” — encompassing the World Cup, Olympic games in both 2028 and 2034, and other big athletic events held on U.S. soil.

“I think when you think about some of the people that might come to the United States, they might have impressions of what the United States of America are based on a narrative that they’ve heard,” Giuliani said. “We get the opportunity to show them what the United States of America really is.”

The sensitive but unclassified playbook encourages U.S. diplomats to use the coming events to encourage more business investment and to engage citizens abroad through gatherings such as parties to watch matches. The diplomats are further encouraged to use purely domestic sports events, such as the upcoming Super Bowl, to promote the American brand.

The playbook outlines a number of other goals, including using the decade to assert U.S. leadership in global sports bodies “to prevent adversaries, such as China and Russia, from leading international organizations [and] exploiting international sporting events for propaganda.”

In September, foreign news reports claimed that the Trump administration was preparing to use its diplomatic apparatus to fight European-led efforts to remove Israel from international competition. A State Department official told Sky News that it would maneuver to block any effort to ban Israel's national soccer team from the World Cup.

At times, the State Department’s sports planning reflects Trump’s social policy priorities.

The administration has already moved to make it harder for trans athletes to obtain visas, and the playbook document recommends pressing the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to comply with Trump executive orders “to protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports environments.” The State Department says it will use “sports-based exchange programs” to pursue those goals globally.

A mid-November cable that Rubio sent to embassies around the world even mentions a Trump personal favorite, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, as a potential inspiration for U.S. diplomats to showcase America and its culture.

“Be creative,” the cable urges.