With the Fifa men’s World Cup looming ever closer on the horizon, James Emmett and David Cushnan consider the tensions between US host cities and Fifa’s central organising committee over who pays for what and the overall value exchange around staging games - and the particular challenges Fifa is facing by staging this year’s tournament in three democracies.

They reflect on James’ conversation with Bay Area Host Committee CEO

Zaileen Janmohamed, and her thoughtful perspective on evolving the model and ultimately giving host cities more flexibility.

Elsewhere, they discuss the NBA’s plans to hold an initial vote next week on whether expansion teams should be created in Las Vegas and Seattle, and the thinking and vision behind the league’s bold growth plan.

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Leaders Week London has a new venue for 2026 - Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC on Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th October. To find out more: leadersinsport.com/leadersweek

Zaileen Janmohamed was only a few weeks in the job when she found herself in a windowless room, standing in front of 32 of the most powerful people in America.

With just ten minutes on the clock, it was her first to task as CEO of the Bay Area Host Committee to pitch for the hosting rights for the 2026 Super Bowl.

She decided to throw the templated stump speech in the trash and go with something bold.

In this episode of Leaders Worth Knowing, Janmohamed unpacks the high pressure, high impact presentation she gave to the NFL Owners meeting that resulted in Levi's Stadium winning the right to host the most recent Super Bowl

Janmohamed became CEO of the Bay Area Host Committee in 2023. It's essentially the sports commission for the Bay Area, and bids for and then operates major, top-tier sports events. Janmohamed runs a team responsible for raising revenues for those events, telling coherent stories about the impact they'll have across the region, then making sure that comes true, while ensuring a legacy too.

She looks ahead to the upcoming Fifa World Cup, which will play six games in the Bay Area; and attempts to unpick and explain a lattice-work stakeholder environment that is creating tension in various host regions just a few weeks out from the biggest World Cup in history.

Janmohamed is a member of the Leaders Under 40 class of 2017, and she also reflects on a career that has seen her play leadership roles at rights holder, brand, and agency organisations; the sport industry full house!

The sharpest operators in sport met the smartest minds from other sectors at Leaders Meet: Innovation in London this week, and James Emmett and David Cushnan are on the ground at 180 Studios bending the Chatham House Rule as far as possible to share a little about what they saw and heard.

They reflect on a few of the standout presentations and panels, including a leadership masterclass from PizzaExpress CEO Paula MacKenzie; the story of The Guardian's reader monetisation model; and how Unilever's AI-powered content studio might be a new model for sport.

And James also caught up with Viagogo's VP of Open Distribution Shaun Stewart, hot off the stage at the event for a potted history of ticket sales and why, even with the help of transformative technology, sport is still taking cues from the airline industry of the 1950s and 60s.

As the Dana White-fronted Zuffa Boxing, backed by TKO and Saudi's Sela, makes its move to dethrone promotional giants Matchroom Boxing and Queensberry Promotions, James Emmett and David Cushnan consider the latest disruption in the fight game and Turki Alalshikh's role as chief string-puller.

They also reflect on their conversation with Uefa Marketing Director Guy-Laurent Epstein and European Football Clubs CEO Charlie Marshall, to unpack the new commercial programme being developed by the UC3 entity, a joint venture between Uefa and EFC - and the flexibility that is being built into the media rights and sponsorship sales packages being taken to market by agency partners Relevent and Two Circles.

And there's reaction to the Premier League confirmation it will launch a direct-to-consumer service in Singapore.

UC3 Co-Managing Directors Charlie Marshall and Guy-Laurent Epstein join Leaders Worth Knowing this week to shine some light on an organization that has been quietly pulling the strings of European football in the shadows for a little while.

It was set up in 2017 as a joint project between what was then the European Clubs Association (ECA) and Uefa to consult on the commercialization of European club competitions - principally the Champions League.

Last year, the project became an incorporated joint venture and has moved from a consulting role to a management capacity.

In the wake of the failed attempt at a European Super League breakaway, Uefa and the continent's most powerful clubs are now bound tightly together. UC3 exists to manage the commercialization of both the men's and women's club competitions; it has contracted Relevent Football Partners and Two Circles as agencies to enact that work in the market.

But how does it work? What's being done differently? And what does it mean for the future of European and world football. Marshall - who is also the CEO of the EFC - and Epstein - the Marketing Director of Uefa - are thrusting UC3 into the limelight.

Over 40,000 people volunteer at Parkrun events worldwide each week, with around 20,000 in the UK alone, which prompts James Emmett and David Cushnan to discuss sport’s reliance on volunteers to help run - and effectively help market - big events.

They reflect on this week’s podcast interview with Elizabeth Duggan, Parkrun’s CEO, and on the word of mouth-driven success story it’s become in the UK and further afield.

Elsewhere, as Gianni Infantino celebrates his 10th anniversary as Fifa President in Instagram style, it’s a timely moment to assess his front-foot approach to communications, in a week when IOC President Kirsty Coventry miscued during a press conference and a leading voice in women’s football, Victoire Cogevina Reynal, stepped away from her Mercury13 multi-club investment firm.

Elizabeth Duggan is approaching one year in the role of CEO at Parkrun, the volunteer-led running organisation that is held up as a blueprint for sports participation in the UK.

Duggan and her team do a lot with a little. What started 21 years ago as one man - Paul Sinton-Hewitt - looking for company on a 5km run around Bushy Park in London has blossomed into a global community of 'fun-runners'. Parkrun welcomed its 12 millionth registrant recently and now operates weekend events - 5km runs and walks, as well as 2km runs for children - in 23 countries around the world.

In the next few years, Duggan anticipates reaching 800,000 weekly runners taking part. In this conversation, she explains the principles that have driven the charity's success.

For more detail and analysis, subscribe for free to the weekly Leaders Worth Knowing newsletter at leadersinsport.com/newsletters/

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Leaders Week London is moving to Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC. We’ll see you on Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th October. For more details visit leadersinsport.com/leadersweek

The proposed merger between the ATP and WTA remains on the table, but as James Emmett and David Cushnan discuss, the time it's taking to finalise tells its own story.

On this week's show, there's reflections on conversations with Marina Storti, CEO of WTA Ventures, the commercial arm of the WTA, and Eno Polo, the new CEO at the ATP - and the challenges tennis faces with calendar congestion, balancing the demands of tournaments of various sizes, and player influence.

There's also time to discuss Casey Wasserman's decision to sell his stake in his agency, and the possible forms the sale could take, and as the NFL hires TMRW Sports to operate its planned new flag football league, how and where rights holders can create new IP, to make a greater footprint, expand geographically or fuel player development.

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Leaders Week London is moving to Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC. We’ll see you on Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th October. For more details visit leadersinsport.com/leadersweek.