Pulling Off 104 Super Bowls: The Paper Document Moving the 2026 World Cup

"It's literally pulling off a hundred and four Super Bowls, coupled with multiple major household-name touring musicians." Amanda Barlow, Vice President of Risk Management and Business Affairs at The Rock-It Company, FIFA's official logistics partner, used that comparison to describe the logistics behind the 2026 FIFA World Cup. 

With 48 teams, 104 matches, and 16 host cities across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, the tournament is the largest in FIFA's history. Behind every match sits a complex cross-border supply chain moving broadcast equipment, team gear, sponsor assets, and thousands of other temporary imports.

On Episode 6 of the Trade & Tech podcast, Gaia Dynamics CEO Emil Stefanutti and Chief Strategy and Compliance Officer Tom Gould spoke with Barlow and Kelli Milianti, ATA Carnet Service Manager at Roanoke Insurance Group, about the customs systems that make an event of this scale possible. Their discussion explored how ATA Carnets keep temporary imports moving across borders, why paper documentation still underpins one of the world's largest sporting events, and what the transition to digital carnets means for the future of international trade.

Why the World Cup Is the Largest Display of International Trade

Barlow's framing of the tournament reaches past sports entirely. The World Cup, she said, "is in essence the largest display of international trade. It brings products and brands to the world." 

The core FIFA freight (balls, uniforms, field equipment) is only the visible layer; underneath sit the sponsor activations, fan experiences, and broadcast infrastructure of global brands from Coca-Cola to Adidas. Asked how much international trade the event actually generates, Barlow said: "It's containers and containers and warehouses and warehouses throughout the three host countries."

The preparation ran for more than two years, mapping freight volume into each host country and distributing it to each stadium. Rock-It used last June's Club Cup as, in her words, a chance "on a much smaller scale to do a dry run of our approach." The operating environment stays hostile even with that runway. "Here's a fun fact: stadiums are not developed with logistics in mind," Barlow said. Every load-in and load-out is different. Her summary of the job: "Take a stadium, turn it upside down, give it a real good shake, and everything that falls out, we're delivering to make the game a success."

Gould contrasted that with the commercial shipping most trade professionals know. A typical importer plans one lane and one mode at a time, moving goods at some point in the future. An event compresses everything. "It's a microcosm of everything that we do in logistics all happening at once, all happening together," he said. The tournament window is five to six weeks, and "the physical movement of the planes, the ships, the trucks, many, many trucks, happens all at the same time." One detail he singled out as unique to time-critical work: people from the logistics company physically flying alongside the most critical components to make sure nothing slips.

A Passport for Goods: How the ATA Carnet Keeps the Tournament Duty-Free 

Most of that equipment is not being imported in the ordinary sense. It enters a country, does its job, and leaves. The legal instrument that makes that affordable is one most fans have never heard of. "Simply put, the ATA Carnet is like a passport for your goods," Milianti explained. "It allows the goods to travel in and out of a foreign country, duty and tax-free."

Without it, the math turns ugly fast. Broadcasters and teams "would have to pay duties and taxes going in and out of Canada, going in and out of Mexico," Milianti said. "With the Carnet, it's one document." Everything is listed on it, arrangements are made before travel, and clearance at the border gets faster and more predictable. In a three-country tournament where a broadcast crew may follow its team through all three hosts, the carnet is the difference between a workable cost structure and duty payments stacking at every crossing.

The volume at Rock-It made that concrete. In the week before kickoff, Barlow's team was “turning hundreds and hundreds of carnets for all the broadcasters that were coming to the United States." The knockout bracket adds an obstacle a commercial importer never faces: nobody knows which team plays where until the round resolves, so crews must stay nimble, and Rock-It issues carnets in partnership with Roanoke in hours. For broadcasters from countries that do not participate in the carnet system, Rock-It built a specific program: it handles their entry into the United States, then obtains a US-issued ATA Carnet so the crew can move between the three host countries on it.

Where carnets go wrong

The failure modes are unforgiving because the document is serial-number specific and, once issued, frozen. "Once the carnet is issued, you can't make any changes. You can't swap any items out," Milianti said. A crew that switches out a microphone at the last minute discovers the problem at the border: "When customs is looking at the microphone that's in hand and what's listed on the carnet and the serial numbers don't match, then that can be a problem clearing customs." Adding an item means obtaining a second carnet.

The procedural traps are just as consequential. The most common mistakes Milianti sees include:

• Forgetting to list an item.

• Descriptions or serial numbers that do not match what actually ships.

• Failing to have the carnet validated in the US before the first departure.

• Not getting it stamped in and out of every country visited. "If they don't get it stamped, then there could be a claim issued on the goods."

• Exceeding the period customs allows the goods to remain in a country. Although a carnet is valid for a year, "customs may only allow the goods to stay in there for three months."

The worst realistic outcome is not seizure drama, it is goods stopped from clearing, or duties and taxes assessed on equipment that was supposed to move free.

The Biggest Event in Sports Still Clears Customs on Paper 

Paper carnets remain the global standard

Here’s a detail that sounds impossible in 2026: a carnet is still a physical packet of pages. "The three countries involved are still working off of a piece of paper inside a cardboard folder that somebody is actually handing to an officer, and that officer is looking at and stamping," Gould said. Customs officers compare the document against the equipment being carried, whether in a suitcase or a shipping container, every time the goods enter or leave a country.

The reliance on paper became clear in one of the episode's most memorable stories. A UK client boarded a flight to Boston carrying only a digital carnet, assuming it had replaced the paper version. The United States does not yet accept digital carnets, forcing Rock-It to arrange a special customs clearance and courier the original paper document overnight so it could continue the journey.

Digital carnets are already working in Europe

While North America still depends on paper, digital carnets are already operating successfully elsewhere. Rock-It, approved by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry to issue carnets, now manages a significant volume of digital carnets between the United Kingdom and the European Union. The process replaces paper with a secure portal, QR codes stored in digital wallets, printed backups for low-connectivity locations, and real-time visibility into every customs transaction.

Barlow said that real-time tracking has significantly reduced the likelihood of customs claims, while clients who have experienced the digital process are reluctant to return to paper documentation.

The race to digitise before 2028

The transition is now being driven by international policy. According to Barlow, the World Customs Organization (WCO) is targeting full digital carnet adoption across participating countries by the end of 2027. Rock-It, Roanoke, and the US Council for International Business are already preparing the first tests of US-issued digital carnets in Europe.

Until US Customs accepts digital carnets, however, paper remains mandatory for US-issued documents regardless of the destination country. Gould noted that the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics represent a natural milestone for full adoption. Beyond major sporting events, digital carnets could reshape live touring logistics by reducing administrative burden, improving visibility, and lowering the costs associated with moving equipment across borders.

Customs Is One Desk Among Many 

Customs is not the only agency with a say. Food and drug authorities are heavily involved (you've seen the stories on the news about the Norwegian team bringing in their own food), along with the Department of Transportation and FMCSA for trucking, the Department of Agriculture, and consumer protection agencies. "You name it, the government agency is aware," Barlow said. 

Rock-It partnered with the agencies early, so requirements were aligned before freight started moving. Gould extended the point across borders: every US agency has a counterpart in Mexico and Canada, and a team bringing its own food to matches in all three countries clears that gauntlet three times. It is a compressed, high-stakes version of the multi-agency clearance work that importers and exporters navigate on ordinary commercial entries every day.

After the final whistle

The tournament's customs work does not end with the final. Rock-It expects to wind down its involvement around August, and the teardown has its own compliance logic. Everything brought in temporarily must be re-exported, and consumables get a conditional pass: "As long as they're not resold, they can come in duty free, but we need to make sure that they are consumed. We're keeping track of that," Barlow said. Merchandise that entered for resale took the ordinary road: "They had to file a formal entry and pay duties and taxes so they could stay in the country." The VIP gifts and promotional giveaways in between are tracked to one of three exits: re-exported, destroyed, or donated. A stadium's worth of goods, in other words, leaves the country with the same paperwork discipline it arrived with.

Why Rock-It Runs an AI Steering Committee and Still Answers the Phone 

When asked whether AI belongs in time-critical logistics, Barlow said: "If a company's not evaluating the options and using AI as a tool, they're gonna be left behind in the dark ages. AI is essential to businesses thriving in the future." She pushes the same message through the Airforwarders Association's technology committee, and the pressure to modernize lands on forwarders and brokers from the regulatory side too, as tariff regimes like Section 232 keep raising the cost of slow answers for freight forwarders and their clients.

Her map of where it fits is specific. "AI is useful pretty much everywhere there is an admin repetitive task or where there is a lot of data or data analytics." Rock-It runs an internal AI steering committee of business leads plus legal and compliance, "because with everything, you need guardrails in place," and rejects adoption theater: "Just implementing it for the sake of implementing it is not beneficial. It becomes too noisy." 

Pulling tracking data into an email is automatable; a shipment stuck in customs mid-transit is not. "You can't train a tool to think. What do I do now?" Her verdict: "AI right now is a great support tool, but it's not ready to be left unchecked or unverified." The carnet world is even earlier on the curve. "We haven't really used AI in the carnet world yet," Milianti said. "An actual person goes and fills it out. We still talk to our clients on the phone . . . We have to get through the digital carnet part first."

One structural mercy came up when Stefanutti asked about classification. Carnets do not require HTS codes. "Thank goodness carnets do not require HTS classifications. It would be a huge burden to the trade to classify carnet general lists," Barlow said, describing lists of "thousands and thousands and thousands of line items" that arrive as Word documents, PDFs, email bodies, and WhatsApp messages before her team compiles them for upload. The exemption only covers the temporary lane, though. The moment goods step outside it (resale merchandise, consumables entering under formal entries), classification and duty calculation come back, which is exactly the workload HTS classification tooling exists to compress. And because Rock-It's operating model has no off-the-shelf software answer, Barlow's team built its own transportation management system: "For us and our business, there is no off-the-shelf solution. So we have to be tech-forward to support our time-critical needs."

Both guests left fans with the same homework. Barlow: "Every time you watch a game, hopefully you look at it differently and think of all of us in the background making it happen." Milianti, who recently caught a tour Rock-It had handled, found herself staring at the stage rig thinking one thing: "That went on a carnet."

See the Platform Built for Modern Customs Compliance

The discussion highlighted how successful cross-border operations depend on more than moving freight. Whether managing HTS classifications, preparing customs documentation, tracking regulatory requirements, or maintaining an audit trail for temporary imports, compliance depends on accurate, well-structured data.

Gaia Dynamics connects directly to the official USITC HTS database and supports the customs workflows importers, exporters, and logistics teams rely on every day, including:

• HTS classification with complete audit trails to support customs reviews.

• Identification of PGA requirements, AD/CVD measures, and other regulatory obligations.

• Centralised documentation that helps teams maintain consistent customs records across shipments.

• Compliance workflows that support trade operations from classification through customs reporting.

Explore for free to see how the platform helps organisations simplify customs compliance and strengthen their trade operations.

Want to hear the full conversation?

Listen to Episode 6 of the Trade & Tech podcast for the full discussion, including the guests' World Cup predictions, Amanda Barlow's shout-out to a history-making South Africa side, and the USA-England match on July 4 she would love to see.

Frequently Asked Questions 

What is an ATA Carnet, and what happens without one?

An ATA Carnet is an internationally accepted customs document, described on the podcast as "a passport for your goods," that allows equipment to move temporarily between participating countries without paying duties and taxes. Without one, each border crossing would generally require duties, taxes, or a separate temporary import arrangement. 

Can items be added to or swapped on a carnet after it is issued?

No. Once issued, a carnet cannot be amended or used for substitute items because it is tied to the listed equipment and serial numbers. If equipment changes, a new carnet is generally required. 

Why are ATA Carnets still paper documents in 2026?

The United States, Mexico, and Canada do not yet accept digital carnets, so paper documents remain mandatory for World Cup 2026. Digital carnets already operate between the United Kingdom and the European Union, with broader adoption targeted by the World Customs Organization by the end of 2027. 

Do goods on an ATA Carnet need HTS classification?

No. Carnet general lists do not require HTS codes, which Amanda Barlow called a relief given lists that run to thousands of line items. The exemption applies only to the temporary-import lane. Goods entering a country for resale must file a formal customs entry with duties and taxes paid, and consumables entering duty-free must be tracked and genuinely consumed rather than sold, so classification obligations return the moment goods leave the carnet's protection.