Leaders Worth Knowing Podcast

This week, London is the stage for the third edition of World Sevens Football, the pioneering 7-a-side women's football competition, and Co-Founders Jennifer Mackesy and Julie Uhrman broke into preparations to join David Cushnan in the studio to discuss the concept and its creation. Eight WSL clubs will compete at Brentford's Gtech Community Stadium for a prize pot of $1.5 million.

Mackesy, who has led the investment in World Sevens, which launched with two events last year, is also a minority owner of Chelsea Women and NWSL club Gotham FC. Uhrman, Co-Founder and President of Angel C...

India’s appetite and readiness to host major global events was one of the main topics at this week’s Indian Sports Summit in Bangalore, and James Emmett is on the ground with the mood and the colour from on and off stage.

With the IPL in full swing, there’s the latest on the league’s media rights planning and what its strategy might be in a changing domestic market, and James has the inside line on Royal Challengers Bangalore’s new ownership.

Alongside David Cushnan, dialling in this week from New Y...

Ross Hutchins is six months into the role as CEO of the International Tennis Federation (ITF).

A former player, Hutchins retired in 2014 and went on to play numerous player-focused roles at the ATP. He replaced Kelly Fairweather in the role as the top executive at the global governing body of tennis in October last year.

He joins the show this week on the back of news that Visa has renewed as a partner of the Davis Cup, the men's team tennis competition organised by the ITF and ahead of a major rebrand that...

The quest to influence and monetise audiences is the core mission for much of the sports industry, and this week James Emmett and David Cushnan reflect on James’ podcast conversation with Liz Wynn, Chief Supporter Officer, at the Guardian - and in particular how the organisation has used newsletters to build direct, meaningful relationships with readers. It sparks a discussion about whether teams and athletes might be missing a trick.

Elsewhere, James reports back from this week’s launch of Ultimate Sevens in London, and has the inside line on the latest disruptor on the rugb...

This episode is a masterclass in driving digital revenue through structured and sophisticated commercialization methods, purpose-led campaigns, and behavioural-psychology informed techniques.

Liz Wynn is the Chief Supporter Officer at the Guardian Media Group. Having had a varied career in telecoms and broadcast media - working at the likes of Orange, EE, and Sky, she joined the Guardian in 2023 to take full responsibility for digital reader revenue - ie anything that comes from subscriptions or donation.

Since that point, the Guardian's efforts to drive revenue through its digital consumers have achieved huge su...

On the eve of the Giro d’Italia, the first grand tour of the cycling year, James Emmett and David Cushnan unpack professional cycling’s business model and examine the tensions at the heart of it.

Reflecting on James’ conversation with INEOS-Grenadiers CCO Tom Hill, they discuss the dominant role of Tour de France-organiser ASO in the sport, and the efforts the UCI WorldTour teams are making to try and grow their own revenues in a sport where sponsorship is particularly critical. They also consider the challenges of building brand equity in teams when team names...

As of the start of the 2026 Giro d’Italia this weekend, the INEOS Grenadiers cycling team will be known as Netcompany-INEOS.

Last week, the team - one of the most successful in elite road cycling - announced a new sponsorship deal with Danish tech and AI firm Netcompany.

INEOS, team owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s giant chemicals company, had yielded the main naming position for a deal reported as worth €100m over five years.

At the centre of deal - one of the biggest in the pro peloto...

After a record-shattering London Marathon, James Emmett and David Cushnan take a look at the ways in which marathons are being packaged and commercialised - and why, after 1.1 million applications this year in London, there's such a thirst for participating.

They examine plans for next year's London Marathon to become a two-day, two-marathon affair; London Marathon Events' recent acquisition of the Frankfurt Marathon; and World Athletics' recent decision to create a standalone marathon world championships.

Elsewhere, as Turkey rejoins the F1 grid, after signing a five-year agreement for a Grand Prix, th...

Table tennis hits London and the podcast this week, as the city hosts the World Team Table Tennis Championships and Table Tennis England CEO Sally Lockyer joins the show. 

The Championships which include 64 men's and 64 women's teams are competing at two London venues, the Copper Box and Wembley's OVO Arena over the next fortnight. Lockyer has been front and centre of the preparations, heading up the joint venture that is responsible for organising and staging the tournament.

She discusses what's been keeping her up at night as the championships - the c...

After a week dominated by speculation about LIV Golf’s future, amid a swirl of rumour about PIF’s continued financial support, James Emmett and David Cushnan attempt to unpick what’s happening and why.

Leaning on the conversation with R&A CEO Mark Darbon this week, they consider what the impact and legacy of LIV Golf is, as the PGA Tour, now stewarded by Brian Rolapp, proposes changes to its structure.

Outside golf, news of layoffs at Snap and Meta prompts a reflection on the relationship between sport and big tech...

The R&A is one of golf's governing bodies, guardian of the rulebook, and the organiser of the world's oldest Major, The Open Championship. As CEO for the past 18 months, Mark Darbon has been busy reframing the organisation's vision to grow the game around the world, and diving into the disrupted, sometimes fractured, world of professional golf.

In this extended conversation, David Cushnan chats to Darbon about preparations for this year's Open Championship and AIG Women's Open; the relationship between professional golf and the amateur, participation side of the sport; and the changing face of...

Gary Neville’s The Overlap, now majority owned by Global, has acquired the watchalong YouTube channels run by Mark Goldbridge, a significant moment in the independent football content space.

James Emmett and David Cushnan dissect this week’s news and consider what Global, the radio and outdoor advertising giant, is buying as it builds out its sport and podcast arms.

There’s also reflections on the future programming that might start to populate in-house streaming services operated by rights-holders - other sports, other leagues and perhaps even other genres - as James...

With the US taking the lion's share of the headlines, you could be forgiven for forgetting that Mexico and Canada are also co-hosting the upcoming Fifa men’s World Cup.

While the US will host 78 of the 104 games, Mexico and Canada will each stage 13 games, in Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Vancouver and Toronto.

On the sidelines of March’s Business of Soccer event in Atlanta, David Cushnan sat down with Héctor Gonzalez Iñarritu, COO and President of Business at Club América, and James Johnson, newly installed at Canadian Soccer...

The first major of the golfing season takes place this weekend. It's a fixture on the global event calendar, the first real harbinger of a major sporting summer, and arguably the finest example of sports marketing strategy in action.

In this episode of the Leaders Worth Knowing podcast, James Emmett is joined by MSQ Sports + Entertainment founding partner Steve Martin to pinpoint why and how the Masters has become the north star for so many sports marketers.

From the look and feel to the sport itself, the TV product and packaging...

Arthur Blank remains a compelling public speaker, even into his ninth decade.

The Atlanta sports doyen was one of a clutch of US sports owners on stage and wandering the halls at the Business of Soccer event at Mercedes-Benz Stadium last week.

David Cushnan was also there, and on his return to the Leaders studio in London, he teams up again with James Emmett to talk about what makes the billionaire class of individuals who own US sports franchises different from their counterparts around the world. Storytelling and status are baked...

With the World Cup just a few weeks away, tournament and team sponsors are rolling out activation plans across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

A trio of senior brand executives sat down with David Cushnan, on the sidelines of Sports Business Journal and Leaders’ Business of Soccer event in Atlanta last week, to run through their activation plans, hopes and targets for the upcoming tournament, and consider what happens afterwards.

Allison Kolber is VP Integrated Marketing at The Home Depot, which is an official tournament supporter amongst several soccer sponsorships, and...

On the eve of the IPL's 19th season comes confirmation that its defending champion franchise - in both the men's and women's competitions - has been sold by Diageo to a conglomerate led by Blackstone and its serial team-buying chairman David Blitzer.

David Cushnan and James Emmett dig into the details of the sale, and reflect on the latest iteration of the IPL as it heads into the penultimate year of its latest media rights cycle. Change is afoot.

Elsewhere in the episode, the art and science of engineering atmosphere at sp...

DJ Skee - also known as Scott Keeney - has carved out one of the most unconventional careers in modern entertainment. From discovering future stars like Kendrick Lamar to becoming the first DJ to perform live at NFL and NASCAR events, he has spent two decades operating at the crossroads of music, media and sport.

Today, he leads The Realist, a fast‑growing memorabilia company partnering with major leagues, teams and entertainment brands to build authenticated, story‑driven collectible lines.

What began with mixtapes and trend‑spotting in the early 2000s has ev...

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.

Elsewher...

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 pre...

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.

...

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 s...

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 ca...

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...

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 - i...

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 st...

WTA Ventures CEO Marina Storti joins the podcast to review a transformative year for women's tennis.

She takes us inside the process of landing Mercedes-Benz as a new headline partner, in what is being widely reported as the biggest sponsorship deal in the history of women's sport.

She details the gains the tour has made across its digital output and in its internal structure.

And she explains the rationale behind the new PIF WTA Maternity Fund programme, an industry-leading scheme that provides WTA players up to 12 months of...

ATP CEO Eno Polo joins the podcast to reflect on his first 100 days in charge of the men's tennis tour.

The Kenyan sets out his strategic priorities in what could end up being a transformative year for tennis, with a merger between the ATP and the WTA firmly on Polo's agenda.

He also outlines the support that the PIF brings to the tour's work with its players, particularly through its sponsorship of the ATP Rankings and through its investment in the Tennis IQ analytics platform.

This episode is...

James Emmett and David Cushnan look ahead to a new Formula 1 season and another potentially seismic shift in the sport.

With significant gains in audience and commercial growth for the motorsport series in recent years, teams have felt the trickle down benefit, logging their own commercial gains.

With the biggest set of rule changes for over a decade coming into force this season, the playing field - theoretically - has been levelled. At this stage, championship contention is a realistic goal for almost all the teams. One that stands a particularly re...

As F1 pre-season testing gets underway in Bahrain, Jeff Slack, Aston Martin F1's Managing Director of Commercial and Marketing, lifts the lid on how the team intends to reach the front of the grid.

He reflects on the way the team has grown to over 1,100 people since it was rebranded as Aston Martin in 2021, its move into a new purpose-built facility at Silverstone and, after a 7th place finish in 2025, how owner Lawrence Stroll has set the course towards competing for world championships in the next few years, with the help of Honda and A...

James Emmett in Brisbane and David Cushnan in London reflect on conversations with Australian Open CEO Craig Tiley and his top team, and explain how the expansion - outwards and upwards - of Melbourne Park hints at a new trend across sport's major events - and opens up the opportunity to create new sponsorship, entertainment and fan-friendly spaces.

There's also time to look ahead to the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, which begins on Friday, and will be spread across Northern Italy - bringing with it the potential for operational and sustainability challenges, that will help d...

As the dust settles on a tournament that attracted a record 1.3 million attendees, we explore the inner workings of the Australian Open in a special episode.

James Emmett spent the weekend on the ground at Melbourne Park, as Carlos Alcaraz and Elena Rybakina claimed the big prizes, to find out how the AO operates, as a tennis and social event, and a best-in-class fan experience.

James sits down with Tennis Australia CEO and Tournament Director Craig Tiley, and then a trio of Tiley's key executives: Chief Content Officer, Darren Pearce; Director of...

The world’s top tennis have been barred from wearing Whoop wearables at the Australian Open, reigniting a debate over who owns personal performance data.

James Emmett is on the ground in Melbourne for this week’s show, with David Cushnan back in the UK, to examine the various cases for ‘owning’ that data.

They also reflect on recent events in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Public Investment Fund’s global sponsorship strategy, laid out in David’s conversation with PIF’s Director and Head of Sponsorship and Events, Alanoud Althonayan.

Alanoud Althonayan, Director and Head of Events and Sponsorship at Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, joins the podcast to explain PIF’s sponsorship strategy and dig into its current key partnerships.

In the first episode of a new series exploring PIF’s growing sponsorship portfolio, Alnothayan sits down with David Cushnan in Riyadh for an extended conversation, outlining what PIF looks for in partners, and the ways it is striving to help solve societal and sporting challenges across its portfolio.

She explains the rationale behind the new PIF WTA Maternity Fund pro...

The NBA’s private event in London on Monday saw investors and other interested parties gather to learn more about the league’s plans for its European league; how is the project starting to come together and what happens now?

James Emmett and David Cushnan unpack the latest on a potentially game-changing project, and reflect on James’ in-depth conversation with British & Irish Lions CEO Ben Calveley, touching on the upside and downside of scarcity, clarity of business models and innovation in rugby union.

There’s also a look at the trend for NFL st...

British & Irish Lions CEO Ben Calveley reflects on a record-breaking tour of Australia in 2025, and looks ahead to the inaugural women's Lions tour of New Zealand in 2027.

The Lions - one of the most idiosyncratic entities in world sport - is the organization set up to manage the occasional rugby union side of the same name. Players are drawn from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland to compete for a touring team historically every four years.

The rugby unions of those same nations co-own the Lions.

This episode may...

Fanatics chief Michael Rubin thinks a new credit card could generate his company’s next billion dollar revenue stream, but could content and his new Fanatics Studios venture also be a contender?

James Emmett and David Cushnan delve into the new projects, and reflect on David’s conversation with Chris Bryant, MD of Euro 2028.

They also examine the raft of innovative, fan-friendly ideas the organisers of the Australian Open are serving up, and the way the Grand Slams are taking up more space in the tennis calendar.

...

Euro 2028 Managing Director Chris Bryant joins the show to share how preparations for the tournament are going.

He'll share how he and his growing team are working with multiple Football Associations, governments and Uefa to bring the tournament, which will be played in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, to life - and how his experience of running the Wembley part of Euro 2020 and the whole of Women's Euro 2022 are helping.

As the World Cup approaches this summer, he also reflects on how major event organisers need to be attuned to the p...

Gerrit Meier, the NFL's Managing Director and Head of International, is on the line from New York, to reflect on another season of games played around the world and the league's wider international ambitions.

He reviews games played this season in London, Berlin, Madrid, Dublin and Sao Paulo, and explains how the NFL approaches operating in new markets, from commercial activity to fanbase development, diplomacy to participation.

Meier also expands on the league's vision to ultimately play up to 16 games per season outside the US, and shares how the NFL is id...

Esteve Calzada, CEO of Saudi Pro League giant Al Hilal, assesses the evolution of football in the Kingdom, as he welcomes Leaders’ Content Director David Cushnan to the club’s corporate office in Riyadh. Al-Hilal SC is Saudi Arabia’s most successful football team, and has clubs in over 20 sports.

In a wide-ranging conversation, the former City Football Club executive offers his advice to sports industry leaders thinking of making a move to Saudi Arabia; what life is like working and living in fast-developing Riyadh; and the challenge of managing a team of 300 made up of a mix...