Leaders Worth Knowing Podcast

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/ ------ 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. ---- 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.

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 paid leave. This episode is part of a series exploring PIF’s growing sports sponsorship portfolio, detailing how it is striving to help solve societal and sporting challenges across its portfolio. Listen to episode 1, with PIF Director and Head of Events and Sponsorship Alanoud Althonayan, here.----- 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.

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 part of a series exploring PIF’s growing sports sponsorship portfolio, detailing how it is striving to help solve societal and sporting challenges across its portfolio. Listen to episode 1, with PIF Director and Head of Events and Sponsorship Alanoud Althonayan, here. ------ 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

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 realistic chance of improvement is Aston Martin, whose commercial MD Jeff Slack is the featured guest on the interview show this week. James and David reflect on Slack's comments, and take some time to look back on the Super Bowl as well as ahead to the future of the IOC's TOP sponsorship model. - -- -- -- --   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

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 Aramco. Slack also draws on his wider sports industry experience, including stints in leadership roles at Inter Milan and IMG, to assess the overall health of F1 and the way it's evolving for brand partners as the 2026 season dawns - and reveals what the sport must be wary of as it enjoys its current fan and corporate boom.--- 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 

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 determine the future of the winter Games ahead of regional editions in the French Alps (2030), Utah (2034) and, most likely, Switzerland (2038). Plus, there's a run-through of the broadcast innovations Olympic Broadcast Services are rolling out for the Games. - -- -- -- -- -- -- - 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

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 Product and Customer Experience, Amanda del Prate; and Director of Partnerships, International, Roddy Campbell. They explain all aspects of how the AO does what it does: designing, developing and delivering sponsor activations, creating hospitality offerings to suit all tastes and price ranges; retail and merchandising experiences; innovative content and broadcast products; and wide-ranging entertainment programmes. - - 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 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.And as British Cycling’s Jon Dutton is appointed as the next CEO of the British Olympic Association, what will the next period of leadership look like for British Olympic sport and its many governing bodies.- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -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