Zaileen Janmohamed hardly had time to update her LinkedIn profile when she received her first and only marching orders from her new boss, Al Guido, the San Francisco 49ers president and board member of the newly formed Bay Area Host Committee.
Go get us Super Bowl 60.
Ten weeks later, the short, spunky Canadian of Indian descent and mother of three walked into a conference room filled with owners of all 32 NFL teams — and did just that.
“That presentation is something I will never forget,” Janmohamed, the CEO of the BAHC, recalls now, almost three years later, less than two months away from kickoff at Levi’s Stadium.
The country’s biggest entertainment spectacle, watched by 127 million last year, will only be one-upped by the FIFA World Cup, the world’s most popular tournament paying a visit a few months later, making for an unprecedented upcoming year of sporting events in the Bay Area — or anywhere.
Lisa M. Gillmor, mayor of Santa Clara, left, and Zaileen Janmohamed, President and CEO of the Bay Area Host Committee, stand with a plaque in honor of FIFA at the Santa Clara Youth Soccer Park in Santa Clara, Calif., Wednesday, June 11, 2025. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)No venue has ever hosted a Super Bowl and World Cup matches in the same calendar year. Add in last February’s NBA All-Star Game, and the region has been on quite the run.
The three events are projected to generate an estimated $1.4 billion in economic impact, according to estimates provided to the host committee by management firm Boston Consulting Group. The host committee expects 500,000 visitors this year — and 13,000 local jobs to accompany them.
Key to the whole operation is Janmohamed, who goes by “Z” to just about everyone and was hired away from the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic organizing committee by Guido in March 2023.
“I knew I needed a rockstar CEO,” Guido said, calling Janmohamed the “perfect person” to lead the BAHC.
Bay Area Host Committee President and CEO Zaileen Janmohamed takes part in the BAHC Speaker Series and Impact Award event at Levi’s Stadium on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Santa Clara, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)The Bay Area didn’t previously have a permanent body with the mission to bid for marquee events until Guido got together with six other presidents of local teams.
When Levi’s Stadium hosted its first Super Bowl in 2016, Daniel Lurie, now the mayor of San Francisco, led a temporary commission, “and it was great,” Guido said. “But we effectively disbanded that host committee right after.
“The vision this time around was that if the Bay is going to continue to have large-scale events — like an All-Star Game, an NHL outdoor game, a College Football Playoff or a Super Bowl — that we needed to have an institution that represents the entire Bay and is going to stand the test of time, that can look back and say they’ve delivered all of these major events.”
The job was a natural fit for Janmohamed. Her parents fled from East Africa independently and met in Vancouver, British Columbia, where their daughter was born. Janmohamed received her MBA and Masters in Sport Management from the University of Massachusetts in 2005 and has lived in the Bay Area since 2006. As a result of her work as senior vice president for LA28, she already knew many of the local sports executives who made up the board.
Jess Smith, president of the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries, would often coordinate flights with Janmohamed when she also was commuting from the Bay to LA as the president of the NWSL’s Angel FC.
“Just talking with her about what this region means and what this opportunity was, she just gets it,” said Smith, one of 10 members on the BAHC Board of Directors. “Even her lived experience, I think, has really aided in how she can lead us in where we need to go.”
A Canadian rite of passage, Janmohamed played hockey competitively (goalie, then left wing) well into adulthood, finally stopping during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also considers herself an amateur DJ and soundtracked the host committee’s recent office party (though she has no plans yet to spin anywhere during the Super Bowl week’s numerous events).
Bay Area Host Committee President and CEO Zaileen Janmohamed, left, takes part in the BAHC Speaker Series and Impact Award event at Levi’s Stadium on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Santa Clara, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)All this worked in her favor when she found herself standing in front of football’s most powerful people — primarily old, white men. At the end of her 10-minute presentation, “it was silent in that room,” Janmohamed said. “Silent. I think people were just like, ‘OK, this is different.’”
Rather than tout the region’s number of hotel rooms — the NFL requires more than 27,000 — or the square footage of San Francisco’s Moscone Center, which will play host to the Pro Bowl in another first, Janmohamed used herself to tell the broader story of the Bay Area.
“I really wanted to talk about the people of this region and the fact that we’re a little bit crazy. We do things differently here,” she said. “An example of that is you have a person in an industry, an Indian woman, who is typically not what you see in this industry. This tells you what you see when you come to the Bay — that anything is possible for anyone at any time in this market.”
Bay Area Host Committee President and CEO Zaileen Janmohamed, left, takes part in the BAHC Speaker Series and Impact Award event at Levi’s Stadium on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Santa Clara, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, stood up, shook Janmohamed’s hand and told her, she said, “I don’t think we’ve had that type of presentation ever here.”
The bidding process for any Super Bowl begins with a wide array of suitors, explained Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president who oversees all of the league’s special events.
“There are probably a dozen cities at any given time who are in the mode of expressing interest in the Super Bowl,” O’Reilly said. Only one receives an invitation to present to the owners.
By that time, the presumptive host city has already gone through a lengthy vetting process. Janmohamed, the BAHC’s sole employee at the time, submitted technical requirements, met with leadership and gave an informal presentation over videoconference.
“And all of a sudden, they’re like, ‘OK, this bid looks great,’” she said. Then came the invitation to deliver her pitch to the league’s owners. “That’s when it was like, ‘Uhhh, the real owners?’”
In this case, the NFL had something else to take into consideration. Eleven of its venues, including Levi’s, were already committed to hosting World Cup matches this summer. While the events take place about four months apart, each is the crown jewel of its sport and requires years worth of advance planning — just to host one, let alone both.
“We were obviously probing hard around (the ability to) pull off both a Super Bowl and a World Cup within 2026,” O’Reilly said.
“We had to articulate very early on that we thought we could do both, and here’s why,” added Janmohamed. “We worked very hard to get them to understand that we could do both.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom told Guido that, “I’d rather you guys do this in one calendar year, one budget cycle.” Guido heard the same feedback from other local leaders. “They would say it’s almost harder for us to do a Super Bowl and then, a year later, do a World Cup.”
Janmohamed included the potential “efficiencies” of hosting both events in her pitch. The league was sold.
Bay Area Host Committee President and CEO Zaileen Janmohamed, center, greets guests at the BAHC Speaker Series and Impact Award event at Levi’s Stadium on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Santa Clara, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)“Selfishly,” O’Brien said, “we want the eyes fully focused on the Super Bowl. You want to ensure that having both events in that window doesn’t distract and only ends up as a positive (for both).”
That is where the host committee comes in. The organization, a 501(c)(6) nonprofit, has grown to 20 employees. It will take around $200 million to pull off both events, according to Guido, primarily going to security. In addition to the games themselves, FIFA and the NFL will host other attractions across San Francisco, Silicon Valley and the East Bay.
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“Being really open and transparent with FIFA, and they know, but we’re going to be a little bit sidetracked for about four weeks,” Janmohamed said. “We’ve tried to get ahead where we can on the World Cup, knowing that we’re going to have to pause a little bit.”
One of her favorite activities is solving puzzles with her family, and with children, sometimes that means pieces get lost in the couch cushions.
“And I’m OK with that,” she said. “I like that chaos.” If the Super Bowl were a 1,500-piece puzzle? “We’re probably at 1,200. We’re getting there. And I pretty much know where all the pieces are. I’ve dug them out of the cushions.”
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