SportsTravel Podcast

You may have noticed that one of the world’s largest sporting events has begun, the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Destinations across the United States, Canada and Mexico have known for years that these weeks are coming, but now that they are finally here, we thought we’d take some time as an editorial team and talk about where we’ve been, what we expect, and maybe even some predictions o...

For decades, the Sports & Fitness Industry Association has been polling Americans on which sports and activities they participate in and how often. The result is the Topline Participation Report , an annual survey that goes into amazing detail on 126 different sports and activities ranging from basketball to birdwatching. By tracking those rates — both those who participate casually and...

George Washington University sports management professor Lisa Delpy Neirotti has just attended her 23rd consecutive Olympic Games, once again playing a volunteer role at the Winter Games in Milan and Cortina. Along the way, she has become a keen observer of the logistics behind the Games, what works and what doesn’t. In this discussion with SportsTravel Publisher Jason Gewirtz, who was also...

At the end of every year, our editorial staff at SportsTravel likes to take a look back at the year past and a look ahead to the year to come. And this year, we’re joined by our newest addition, Paul Stevens , who became senior editor of SportsTravel in November after a career in the business-to- business media space. He’s also a true sports fan, which makes him the perfect person to d...

Like the millions of people living with disabilities, Paralympians have a multitude of ways they acquired those disabilities. Some like Ezra Frech were born with disabilities and many others like Lindi Marcusen acquired those disabilities later in life, in her case in a car accident just two weeks after her wedding. Nonetheless, the Paralympic Games have provided an amazing outlet for Ezra, Lindi...

Carlos Ezpeleta joined Dorna Sports as an intern in 2007, took on a full-time role in 2013 and has since worked his way to Chief Sporting Officer at MotoGP, directly responsible for the Sporting and Technical areas of the Championships as well as overseeing activities in the Promoters, Operations and Talent Promotion departments. Dan Rossomondo’s career began in advertising sales at Madison...

Raffaella Paniè is an Italian designer and creative director, serving as Director of Brand, Identity, and Look for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games Milano Cortina. She leads the design of the Games’ visual identity, including the emblem, pictograms, mascots and medals. Her work emphasizes a modern Italian spirit, sustainability, and community, showcasing Italy’s creativit...

Rob Stull was elected president of the International Modern Pentathlon Union in November 2024, a four-year tenure that includes the 2028 Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles. Stull was an alternate to the 1984 U.S. Olympic modern pentathlon team, competed in both fencing and modern pentathlon at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, then competed in modern pentathlon at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Starting at...

John Kemp may be the perfect person to be at the helm at the Lakeshore Foundation . As you’ll hear in this episode, his passion for the adaptive sports community isn’t just professional. It’s personal. Born without arms and legs, Kemp had to adjust at an early age to his surroundings, and managed to play baseball even if his career may not have been worthy of the Hall of Fame as...

Major League Cricket returned to Broward County Stadium in Lauderhill, Florida, over the Fourth of July weekend for a series of T20 cricket matches featuring the league’s six franchises from New York, Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington. The stadium in Lauderhill was one of the sites that was used for the 2024 T20 Cricket World Cup, of which Johnny Grave was the chief e...

Under the direction of Bob Kendrick, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City has become a must-see venue for fans of baseball and American history. It chronicles the journey of black baseball players and coaches, highlighting the elite-level competition the Negro Leagues provided. The museum is currently 10,000 square feet, but Kendrick has started the “Pitch for the Future Cam...

Ray Allen played 18 seasons in the NBA and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 2018. Allen was a 10-time NBA All-Star and won an Olympic gold medal as a member of the 2000 United States men's basketball team. In 2021, he was selected to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team, having won two NBA championships, one with the Boston Celtics and one with the Miami Heat...

Ed McCaffrey has long known success on the football field. From his college days in Stanford, where he met his wife who was an accomplished soccer player for the university as well, to his playing days with the New York Giants, San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos from 1991 through 2003, his career found him as teammates with other legends of the sport and in rare company. His Super Bowl win wit...

SportsTravel ’s coverage of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup , which will be the biggest ever with 48 teams and 16 host cities spread across three countries, has been extensive. Throughout the process from FIFA’s visiting host city candidates , to the day of the announcement in July 2022 of which cities will host games and an inside view of what it was like , SportsTravel has detail...

For decades, the Sports & Fitness Industry Association has been polling Americans about their participation levels in more than 100 sports and activities. The data, released annually in their Topline Participation Report, breaks those numbers down by individual sports and activities, types of sports like water sports, winter sports or racquet sports, and also by gender, age and income levels....

Laura Gainor ’s background in pickleball is significant, as she was around the sport in some of its earlier days before it became a national phenomenon. During her time in marketing at USA Pickleball, she witnessed first-hand how the sport was taking off. Today, of course, the numbers speak for themselves. In last year’s Topline Participation Report produced by the Sports & Fitness...

Travis Murphy ’s work background is a fascinating one, and one that you may not realize is a key component of the sports industry behind the scenes. Before starting his company Jetr Global Sport + Entertainment , he previously served as the senior director of international government affairs for the National Basketball Association. In that role, he helped thousands of NBA, WNBA, 2K, G League...

The team at SportsTravel has racked up thousands of miles this past year in the name of sports-related travel, attending sporting events at all levels from youth tournaments to the Olympic Games and the Super Bowl. Along the way, we’ve assembled some observations of those events and the logistics behind them. In this conversation, Executive Editor and Publisher Jason Gewirtz, Managing Editor...

At this year’s TEAMS Conference, Indianapolis was announced as the winner of Best Host City at the SportsTravel Awards. Since July of 2023, Indianapolis has hosted events that total an estimated $500 million in economic impact, including the 2023 Big Ten Football Championship, the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend, the 2024 NFL Combine, 2024 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball First and Second Rounds, and th...

After serving as chief executive officer of USA Weightlifting for nearly 10 years, Phil Andrews was appointed USA Fencing CEO in August 2022 to oversee the national governing body for the Olympic and Paralympic sport of fencing in the United States. This past summer, USA Fencing won four medals overall at the Olympic Summer Games in Paris, including its first ever team Olympic gold in women’s foil...

The NCAA is in a transformative era and that includes its championship landscape. Acrobatics and tumbling, equestrian, rugby, stunt, triathlon and women's wrestling are working their way through the NCAA’s Emerging Sports for Women program with the hopes of gaining enough university participation to become NCAA championships — with some on the cusp of joining the ranks. In this recording from the...

As president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association , Geoff Freeman is the leading advocate for the more than $1 trillion U.S. travel and hospitality industry. In this role, he is charged with positioning the industry to seize emerging opportunities and further establishing travel as a vital economic force in the United States. Before taking over at U.S. Travel, Freeman was president and CEO of th...

Ezra Frech was born a congenital amputee but started off his athletic career mostly competing against non-disabled athletes. It was when he was 8 years old that his father took him to his first para competition, and given that support, he was able to perform at his highest level. After that day, Ezra and his father made a promise to each other that they would bring para events to Southern Californ...

Like many Olympians and Paralympians, Susannah Scaroni has had to overcome her share of challenges. In her case, a car accident at the age of 5 caused her to need a wheelchair for mobility, a journey that led her to adaptive sports. Her initial experience was not positive. But when she discovered a welcoming adaptive sports program in Spokane, Washington, her interest grew. As her training grew, s...

You may not immediately recognize the name Danny Boy O’Connor . But if you’ve turned on a radio or attended an in-person sports event in the last 30 years you certainly know his music. As a co-founder of the group House of Pain, he was on the ground floor of the group’s biggest crossover hit, “Jump Around.” As you’ll hear in this conversation, he was a connoisseur of music growing up in New York a...