LA28 committee chooses marketing chief Carter as new CEO

The organizing committee for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics elevated its top marketing officer, Kathy Carter, to CEO on Tuesday as it ramps up preparations for the Games that are now less than seven years away.

Carter started work for the committee in 2018 as its chief revenue officer and is responsible for securing key deals with founding sponsors including Delta Airlines and Comcast.

Carter will continue to cut deals in an Olympic landscape that has been altered both by its own attempts to streamline the Games, along with the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on sports and

the Olympic schedule itself.

She said one of her key challenges will be “bringing together talent from an experience stand point, but also from a diversity stand point, that allows us to prepare for the known and, more importantly, the unknown.”

With Carter, the committee now has about 10 top executives on board. Casey Wasserman, who drove the bid to bring the games back to LA, is the chair of LA28.

Games organizers have put out a $6.9 billion budget and promised to pay for all expenses through sponsorships, ticket sales, merchandising and other revenue.

A recent study has shown that since 1960, Olympic cities have surpassed their budgets by an average of 172%. Los Angeles thinks it is in a unique position because it doesn’t plan to build massive new venues, and will use UCLA’s campus as the athletes’ village.

US Soccer says it has offered men, women identical contracts

NEW YORK — The U.S. Soccer Federation said it had offered identical contract proposals Tuesday to the players’ associations for the men’s and women’s national teams, and the governing body said it would refuse to agree to a deal in which World Cup prize money is not equalized.

The unions for the men and women are separate. Under federal labor law, they have no obligation to bargain jointly or to agree to similar terms.

The men’s contract expired in December 2018. The women’s agreement runs through this December.

“U.S. Soccer firmly believes that the best path forward for all involved, and for the future of the sport in the United States, is a single pay structure for both senior national teams,” the USSF said in a statement. “This proposal will ensure that USWNT and USMNT players remain among the highest-paid senior national team players in the world, while providing a revenue sharing structure that would allow all parties to begin anew and share collectively in the opportunity that combined investment in the future of U.S. Soccer will deliver over the course of a new CBA.”

The men’s and women’s unions did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Molly Levinson, a spokeswoman for the women players suing the federation, declined to comment.

After the USSF asked the men’s union last week to voluntarily equalize World Cup bonus money paid to the federation by FIFA, former men’s national team players declined comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

AP source: 6 Saints coaches have positive COVID tests

Six unidentified members of the New Orleans Saints coaching staff, a player and a nutritionist have tested positive for COVID-19, two people familiar with the situation said.

The people spoke with The Associated Press on Tuesday on condition of anonymity because the team and NFL had not made a public statement about the matter. The names of those who tested positive were not expected to be released in the short term because of federal medical privacy laws.

The people said the entire Saints coaching staff had been vaccinated.

It is unclear how long those who tested positive will remain isolated from the team before they may return to the field or in-person meetings.

For now, the entire team is operating under the NFL’s enhanced mitigation protocols, meaning mandatory masking inside facilities, daily testing, no in-person meetings and grab-and-go meals.