Episodes

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...

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 betw...

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...

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-ho...

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 Jo...

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...

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 w...

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 Depo...

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 ...

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. W...

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 mo...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 Presiden...

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...

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 discus...

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 provi...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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 - bringin...

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 execut...