The Big Game 2025

Terrorism and the Big Game

Monitoring Threats Ahead of the Major U.S. Event

Overall Terrorism Risk in the United States

The United States’ terrorism risk rating is LOW. Threats posed by transnational and domestic terrorism are persistent but infrequent security threats nationwide pose a limited, incidental threat to businesses.

The map shows Seerist’s Risk Rating map overlay, portraying the country’s LOW terrorism rating.

Islamist Extremists

Right-wing Extremists

Left-wing Extremists

Islamist extremist groups have high intent-–but low capability—to carry out sophisticated, complex attacks on US soil. The general threat from Islamist extremists has become less predictable, less sophisticated, and more localized. Recent Islamist extremist plots have targeted public spaces and other soft targets, posing an incidental threat to business assets and personnel. Attacks have also become smaller in scale—making use of firearms, bladed weapons, vehicle ramming, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—which indicates a limited threat to physical business assets.

While right-wing extremism remains a low threat to business, both the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI consider such extremists the country’s primary terrorist threat. There are indications of radicalization within right-wing groups, which include a shift towards more opportunistic, less predictable violent attacks.

Left-wing extremists—chiefly militant anarchist and anti-fascist (‘antifa’) groups—have also increasingly perpetrated violence and vandalism in reaction to government social, economic, and security policies. Anti-police and environmental activists have engaged in vandalism against police and business assets over the last year. However, these incidents are small-scale and isolated.

Source: Control Risks

Terrorism Trends in the United States

Verified Events (VEs) are authenticated by a team of subject matter experts that identify, verify, and monitor events 24/7. VEs with potential but no official confirmed ties to terrorism receive both “crime” and “terrorism” designations. Hover over red heatmap to display the Verified Event.

The map displays six terrorism VEs from 1 July 2024 to 22 January 2025. Among these, only the New Orleans (Louisiana) vehicle ramming attack on New Year’s Day in 2025 links directly to Islamic extremism. The five other VEs have potential ties to terrorism, but no official confirmation exists currently. These include the July 2024 attempted assassination of now-President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and the more recent January 2025 vehicle explosion outside of a Las Vegas hotel (Nevada).

Source: Seerist

Security Trend Analysis Near Caesars Superdome

The 2025 Big Game championship will be held on 9 February at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans at 18:30 local time. Near Caesars Superdome the most prevalent VEs over a 6-month period were unrest events. There were several protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict held at Tulane University (~5.1 kilometers from the Big Game venue) and in nearby public squares. Of note, shooting events and terrorism incidents were not as common near the venue.

New Orleans VE Heatmap (1 Jan 2024 – 22 Jan 2025)

Click to zoom in map section.

30% of all VEs recorded were attributed to unrest, while crime accounted for 18%.

Caesars Superdome

Local Community Groups

Common Criminals

Labour/Trade Unions

Security Forces

Unknown

Islamist Extremists

Source: Seerist

Vehicle Ramming Attack in New Orleans

Seerist’s multiple features allowed monitoring of the New Year’s Day terrorism-linked incident, as well as the reponse that followed.

In Focus

Monitor Security Developments using EventsAI

Create custom searches using Seerist’s EventsAI to monitor local and international events, as well as social media, to track security and related incidents ahead of the Super Bowl in New Orleans. EventsAI Sentiment analysis involves the use of natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to identify and categorise sentiment expressed in textual data. Our model gauges the prevailing sentiment, whether positive (in green), negative (in red) or neutral.

Source: Seerist

The EventsAI Sentiment chart of the Super Bowl custom search shows that the public’s sentiment has remained relatively positive following the New Year’s Day vehicle ramming attack in New Orleans.

Source: Seerist

Click for more information.

Control Risks Analysis

Vehicle-borne attacks likely to persist

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on 13 January warned of potential copycat or retaliatory attacks following the vehicle attack in New Orleans (Louisiana, US) on 1 January 2025. Threat actors will likely continue to utilize vehicle-borne tactics when mounting attacks, including against soft targets such as pedestrians and crowded venues. While Islamist extremists, and to a lesser extent right-wing extremists and conspiracists, have increasingly used cars as weapons since the mid-2010s, personal grievances will likely continue to be the most dynamic threat for vehicle-borne attacks. As the global terrorism threat level remains elevated and ideological motivations continue to fragment, the broader threat of vehicle rammings remains elevated, especially in Europe, North America, and parts of the Middle East.

Tactics Perpetrators will likely continue to use vehicle-borne tactics due to their availability and relative ease-of-use compared to firearms or explosives. Assailants have rented, stolen or used personally owned vehicles in attacks. Some attackers have also been armed with additional weaponry, such as knives and firearms, to use once the vehicle has stopped, prolonging the attack time and increasing potential casualties. Notably, the New Orleans perpetrator also reportedly placed numerous improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at nearby locations. Threat outlook In an effort to deter vehicle-borne tactics, security measures will likely remain heightened at high-profile targets such as shopping areas, transportation hubs and other crowded areas, especially in Europe and North America. However, while such efforts will aim to make such attacks more difficult to carry out, they may also have the inadvertent effect of deflecting attacks towards softer, nearby locations. As the global terrorism threat level remains elevated and ideological motivations continue to fragment, the broader threat of future vehicle rammings also remains elevated, especially in Europe, North America and the Middle East.

Verified Unrest Event by Perpetrator

Breaking Events are triggered by events or activities in a specific location that have the potential to be high-impact incidents, and diverge from the baseline security, operational or political environment in that location, and that we assess to be anomalous.

PulseAI is an algorithm designed to identify anomalies in media reporting to compute daily micro-changes in risk and stability. Pulse scores can be used as indicators to alert users to actions that may pose a risk or present an opportunity to their operation.

Breaking Events

AI-Driven Monitoring

Verified Events

New Orleans’ city Pulse stability score dropped below the 60-day average, following the vehicle ramming attack on Bourbon Street.

EventsAI Emotion uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to identify and categorize emotions expressed in textual data. You can use EventsAI Emotion in combination with other features of Seerist to understand sentiment around events, individuals, or types of threats.

Fear emotions in the New Orleans recorded a spike in the aftermath of the vehicle ramming.

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