Senior Director, Sports Marketing Strategy

About the Role

The Senior Director of Sports Marketing Strategy will act as a strategic partner and chief-of-staff to the Executive Vice President (EVP) of Sports Marketing. The position is vital in forming a clear Sports Marketing agenda that aligns with enterprise goals, creating an operational rhythm, a decision-making calendar, and an execution framework. This role bridges planning, prioritization, governance, and communication efforts across various verticals such as athletes, teams, leagues, brand, product, marketplace, finance, human resources, and operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Oversee the Sports Marketing strategic planning timeline, including major milestones, decision checkpoints, leadership meetings, and inputs to enterprise-wide planning.
• Coordinate Sports Marketing contributions to corporate planning forums like CSR, financial reviews, and strategic prioritization discussions.
• Align enterprise-level strategy with Sports Marketing execution, ensuring clarity on priorities, trade-offs, investment decisions, and outcomes.
• Serve as a trusted advisor and chief-of-staff to the EVP, preparing for critical leadership meetings and managing communication flow.
• Manage the EVP's operating rhythm, Create agendas, meeting structures, pre-read materials, follow-ups, decision tracking, and cross-team alignment.
• Anticipate challenges, surface essential decisions, and keep focus on priority initiatives.
• Lead the development of the 2030 Sports Marketing plan by translating enterprise ambitions into clear strategies, priority projects, timelines, and success metrics.
• Maintain oversight of strategic initiatives, risks, dependencies, and resource allocation to ensure smooth execution.
• Represent Sports Marketing in cross-functional strategy sessions to integrate athlete, brand, business, and operational priorities into overall plans.
• Build and sustain trusted relationships across senior leadership and partners to drive alignment and accelerate strategic execution.

Who You Will Collaborate With

This role reports to the VP of Planning and Operations and supports the EVP, Sports Marketing directly. The job requires close collaboration with Sports Marketing leadership, portfolio leaders, finance, HR, brand, product, marketplace, operations, and enterprise planning teams to shape and execute the agenda.

Candidate Profile

• At least 15 years of relevant industry experience preferred.
• Seven or more years of management experience preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or related disciplines; a suitable combination of education, experience, and training is acceptable.
• Established network and extensive experience in Running sports is highly valued.
• Proven success handling complex, high-profile projects.
• Exceptional skills in managing high-level relationships and communicating with senior leadership.
• Ability to interact effectively across global regions, languages, and cultures, valuing diversity of thought.
• Experience managing budgets, developing tracking tools, and providing regular leadership updates.
• Familiarity with project development tools such as Keynote, Excel, and Air Table.
• Strong skills in prioritizing workload, adapting dynamically, and influencing cross-functional teams towards common objectives.
• Willingness to travel internationally and domestically up to 25% of the time.

Additional Information

The company provides multiple accommodations during the interview process, including screen readers, sign language interpreters, accessible interview locations, closed captioning, and other reasonable modifications upon request due to disabilities.