The Cost of the Cup: The Surge That Isn't

Before every major sporting event, like the World Cup, the Super Bowl, the same warning comes back around: tens of thousands of women and girls may be trafficked in for the event. In 2006, Germany was told to brace for 40,000. When the tournament was over, investigators could only connect five cases to it. In part one of The Cost of the Cup, we follow that number from the moment it was invented, through every host city that inherited it, to the fact-checkers and researchers who kept finding nothing. And then we ask the harder question underneath the myth: if the flood never actually arrives, why do we keep aiming the light at the stadium? Because while we're looking there, we're looking away from where the crime may actually live en masse — who it targets, who does the recruiting, and how it really works.Until All Are Free is hosted by Preston Goff, and is a production of The Exodus Road, a global anti trafficking organization with a vision for a world where no human is bought, sold, or exploited. Find us online at uaafpod.com.