The televised opening shot for Seattle’s role in the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup is easy for anyone to envision — a picturesque view of Puget Sound and the city’s waterfront in all its summertime glory.
How that integrates with the matches at Lumen Field and is felt by people across Washington in addition to the world while leaving a positive, lasting imprint is what newly appointed SEA 2026 chief executive officer Peter Tomozawa is tasked with accomplishing.
“The city will not flop,” Tomozawa said. “But we will flop if we don’t deliver a legacy that people will remember for decades. That’s what I really want to do.”
Beth Knox, the SEA 2026 co-board chair and president of the Seattle Sports Commission, formally introduced Tomozawa to media Tuesday at Lumen Field. It marked a transition from Knox and co-board chair Maya Mendoza-Exstrom leading the city’s pitch to hosting World Cup matches to the work of building the infrastructure to host.
FIFA in June 2022 named Seattle as one of 16 North American cities — 11 in the U.S. — that will be venues for an expanded 48-team tournament. Tomozawa said soccer’s governing body will notify host cities about the number of matches they will hold after the women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this summer.
While the number will either be four or six matches, Tomozawa’s plan for the fan experience on the waterfront will run the entirety of the men’s World Cup, which is slated for June 8 through July 3, 2026. He also wants viewing parties across the state.
Tomozawa said funding is the first challenge for SEA 2026, which will operate as a nonprofit intended to disband after the tournament. FIFA is providing resources to host cities, including staff, but has permitted cities to use local commercial and corporate partners like in 1994 when the U.S. last hosted the men’s World Cup.
SEA 2026 spent Tuesday morning sketching a plan for the look of those sponsorships. Tomozawa is also in the process of hiring a senior executive team to guide the overall project.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity,” Knox said of corporate sponsorships, which SEA 2026 wants to have a wide spectrum of participation. “It’s unusual but it’s exciting that we get to offer this extraordinary event experience that is coming to our region to corporate partners who have the same values and perspective on showcasing Seattle to the world.”
The magnitude of the project prompted Tomozawa to step down from his post as Sounders president of business operations. He was named to the position in August 2019 and said helping to navigate the organization through the onset of the COVID pandemic is among his best achievements.
The Sounders are expected to announce Hugh Weber as Tomozawa’s replacement within the week. Weber was most recently president of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which is the parent company of the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils and Prudential Center.
“In 2019, I got here, and we won MLS Cup and I was like, wow, this is normal, this is easy,” said Tomozawa, who has roots in Michigan and relocated to Washington from Hawaii in 2014. “Then COVID hit and that was a really hard time. We had to cut staff. It was very emotional. We didn’t have any fans in the stands … we had to figure it out. So, what I’m most proud of is how we managed through that process.”
Tomozawa’s departure comes soon after the club’s largest supporters groups issued statements expressing disappointment in Providence Swedish being the new marque sponsor.
The nonprofit health care organization was criticized for its “policies around abortion rights, fairness in the treatment of transgender people, and low-income patients,” according to a statement from the Sounders FC Alliance Council — an elected body representing the team’s season-ticket members.
Tomozawa, who’s a minority Sounders owner along with his wife Donna LeDuc, said he was “in the room” during the process in selecting a sponsor to replace Zulily.
“My thinking on Providence still is they’re going to do so much good. I just urge the community to give us a chance to show what that partnership is going to look like,” Tomozawa said. “I know there’s been some discussion around Providence and so forth, but this is a company that we thought long and hard about who we want to partner with and stay tuned, be patient is what I would say. There’s so much great intention behind the two organizations and trust us a little bit on the sense of the Sounders have always been and stood for doing good in the community. We’re never going to stray from that.”
Tomozawa’s new position will keep him in contact with the team as a partner in SEA 2026’s plans. He’s already using the experiences of selling out Lumen when the Sounders won the 2019 MLS Cup and 2022 CONCACAF Champions League title as a template for the World Cup.
“We have a huge advantage because we’re an organization that are led by people that truly understand soccer,” Tomozawa said. “No offense to my other cities, but a lot of them are not led by people that understand the game and what it takes to put on a major event like those specific to FIFA.”