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Late last year, Cathy Lanier — chief security officer for the National Football League — told members of the House Homeland Security Committee that the league reported a 20,000% increase in unauthorized drone activity over stadiums during games between 2017 and 2023. Some of that activity resulted in game delays.
As PCMag.com reported:
In 2023, the NFL experienced 2,845 rogue drone flights, up from 2,537 the year before. “To put these numbers in context, when I testified in 2018, we had tracked about a dozen incursions by drones at stadiums during games in the 2017 season,” Lanier said. “In the 2018 season, we tracked 67 drone incursions at games.”
Drones are regularly flying over Major League Baseball games, NCAA Division I football games, and NASCAR, Indy Car and Champ Series races.
So it’s no surprise that the NFL, MLB, NASCAR and the NCAA support the Disabling Enemy Flight Entry and Neutralizing Suspect Equipment (DEFENSE) Act — a new bipartisan bill that strives to enhance security at major sporting events and outdoor gatherings by ensuring that state and local law enforcement officials have the authority and tools necessary to protect those events from aerial threats in real-time, rather than waiting for federal intervention.
“Major events — including sports and live entertainment — play a significant role in supporting our economy in Las Vegas and across the country, and we need to ensure they are safe,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada), who co-sponsored the legislation with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) said in a statement. ”Our bipartisan bill would enable state and local law enforcement to better mitigate threats posed by drones to the security of these high attendance events.”
The DEFENSE Act would provide “the tools for local and state law enforcement to protect citizens,” Cotton told ESPN.com. “Local law enforcement already protects the perimeter of these events. We already expect them to stop a dump truck that would cause harm, so we need to also give them the tools to protect the airspace from weapons and biological threats.”
According to ESPN:
Currently, only federal law enforcement on-site at events such as the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Rose Bowl and the Boston Marathon can disable unauthorized drones. Nearly all other major sporting events, including thousands of NFL and MLB games, do not have officials on-site with the legal authorization to quickly remove a drone threat. …
The NFL paused the AFC Championship Game in January 2024 between the Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs after a drone entered the stadium’s restricted airspace. The drone operator pleaded guilty to violating national defense airspace. [In January 2025] a wild-card game between the Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers was temporarily suspended when a drone flew over the bowl of M&T Bank Stadium. That alleged drone operator is facing multiple federal charges.
“Many drones around large athletic events are hobbyists or enthusiasts or practical jokers,” Cotton said. “But we can’t take the risk of fan lives, because some of these drones can be equipped to carry explosives or most chillingly can be equipped with some kind of biological weapon.”
The new bill would apply only to sporting events that already have temporary flight restrictions, including stadiums and ballparks with more than 30,000 people and outdoor gatherings with more than 100,000 people. That would include all NFL, MLB and NCAA Division I football games, NASCAR, IndyCar and Champ Series races.
The bill also would require the Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to create a list of approved technology that local and state law enforcement offices can use to address drone-related threats, according to Cotton’s office.
“For several years, the NCAA has expressed concern for the threat that unauthorized drones pose at NCAA championships and college sporting events,” Tim Buckley, the NCAA’s senior vice president of external affairs, said in a statement.
“Giving qualified law enforcement partners at the state and local level the resources necessary to mitigate drone related threats is essential to helping keep events and communities across the country safe,” added Allen Taylor, managing director of security for NASCAR.
It’s worth noting that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, last year opposed a drone bill designed to increase federal, state and local authority to intercept communications and disrupt drone activity. “History has shown us time and again how fear and manufactured urgency are used as pretexts to expand government power at the expense of freedom,” he said during a speech on the Senate floor in mid-December. “This is not about security — it is about unchecked government overreach. It is about capitalizing on fear and media-driven hysteria to jam through sweeping legislation that violates the civil liberties of the American people.”
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