Paraag Marathe, chairman of Leeds United, looks on prior to the Premier League match between Leeds United and Brighton & Hove Albion at Elland Road on May 17, 2026, in Leeds, England.
Paraag Marathe, chairman of Leeds United, looks on prior to the Premier League match between Leeds United and Brighton & Hove Albion at Elland Road on May 17, 2026, in Leeds, England.Nathan Stirk/Getty Images
It sure seems like it was a dizzying Friday for longtime San Francisco 49ers executive Paraag Marathe.
Marathe has been with the 49ers since 2001, starting as a data analyst and eventually moving up to chief strategy officer, in charge of salary cap management and contract negotiations, and even president for a time. The Saratoga-raised lifelong 49ers fan and Stanford MBA graduate has been quite the controversial figure around the team.
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Initially, coaches vilified him for his lack of football background. He also prompted fans’ ire when the front office effectively pushed out Jim Harbaugh and went through a massive dip in the 2010s, right as the franchise moved to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. To this day, Marathe has remained involved in the team’s contract negotiations, no matter how contentious those have gotten.
But in recent years, Marathe has become the face of the team’s European soccer expansion as the president of 49ers Enterprises, the organization’s sports investment entity. In the past five years, 49ers Enterprises has become the sole owner of English Premier League club Leeds United and the majority owner of Scottish powerhouse Rangers FC, with Marathe in prominent leadership roles at both clubs. (His biography on the Leeds United website says he splits time between the English city, Glasgow in Scotland and the Bay Area.)
That soccer background seemed particularly noteworthy on Friday morning, when multiple outlets reported that Marathe was one of three finalists in the running to become the commissioner of Major League Soccer, the top men’s league in the United States and Canada. MLS has been searching for a successor to longtime Commissioner Don Garber since last year, and Marathe was reportedly running against former Fox executive David Nathanson and Los Angeles FC co-owner Larry Berg. The Athletic reported the vote for a replacement was expected in early August.
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But Sportico, one of the outlets that reported the finalist list, came back about five hours later and reported that Marathe had pulled himself out of the running for the job. Sportico reported that as its initial story came out, Marathe “was still informing people involved in the search of his decision on Friday morning.”
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Marathe is clearly a highly valued part of the 49ers operation — you don’t end up involved in this many roles without a lot of internal respect. So it surely would raise eyebrows for the 49ers to see Marathe was deep enough in the running for the commissioner job to reach the finalist stage. And it makes it quite curious that, at the same time it was being reported by many outlets that Marathe was a finalist for the job, he was apparently withdrawing his name from consideration.
July 18, 2026
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Sports Editor
Alex Simon is the sports editor for SFGATE. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Alex has been in journalism for years as an editor, reporter and adjunct professor, most recently working at Bay Area News Group. He has degrees from Elon University and Arizona State University. When not at a sporting event, Alex enjoys playing sports and finding a good dive bar, and he loves In-N-Out Burger a bit too much for his own good.