Manage partnerships with sports leagues, ensuring compliance and operational execution while leading collaboration with internal teams to drive revenue growth.
About Us
Powered by one of the largest global newsrooms in sports media, The Athletic brings sports fans the most comprehensive stories about the teams, sports and athletes they love. The Athletic’s newsroom of 500+ full-time staff delivers in-depth coverage of hundreds of professional and college teams across more than 47 North American markets and all 20 football clubs in the English Premier League, as well as many Championship clubs.
About This Role
We are looking for a Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager to apply their skills in business operations and partner management - supporting senior leadership and working across all functions to maximize the business impact of The Athletic’s large and growing commercial organization and league partnerships business. Our ideal candidate will be experienced in partner management, business development, cross-platform advertising programs, and business operations within the sports partnerships industry, and have familiarity with managing large and complex strategic partnerships.
Partnership management is a team sport, and you will be an expert collaborator responsible for executing innovative, integrated partnership programs in collaboration with Strategy, Planning, Legal, Finance, Audio, Editorial, Social, Product, Marketing, and PR teams to execute compelling, strategic cross-platform programs for our strategic partners that drive company revenue across all sports verticals.
The ideal candidate is based in the greater New York City Metro area. Candidates in other locations will also be considered however.
Responsibilities
- League & Partner Management
- Rights, Compliance & Execution
- Project & Program Management
League & Partner Management
- Manage the day to day relationships with The Athletic’s sports league partners.
- Own operational execution of league partnerships, with a focus on video, highlights, and emerging content formats.
- Build trusted, long-term partnership relationships through clear communication, strategic planning, and proactive problem-solving.
- Lead regular partner check-ins, performance reviews, and recaps.
Rights, Compliance & Execution
- Translate league agreements and content rights into clear internal guidelines for video, editorial, social, and product teams.
- Partner closely with Legal to ensure compliance with league rules, usage rights, approvals, embargoes, and attribution requirements.
- Internally advocate for league partners to ensure contractual obligations and brand standards are met.
- Monitor and evaluate partnership success against agreed KPIs.
Project & Program Management
- Develop strong partner relationships, through effectively communicating complex ideas and strategies, leading meetings, crafting partner correspondence, driving campaign production and evaluating partnership success.
- Identify process improvements to scale partnership operations efficiently.
- Collaborate with the broader Business Development team, Strategy and Planning teams to identify new opportunities to expand league partnerships and unlock incremental revenue.
- Serve as the primary point of contact between internal cross-functional teams including legal, finance, product, editorial, design and marketing to ensure all deliverables are on message, on track, and within scope.
- Build and maintain project delivery trackers and create proof of delivery documents/recaps.
Requirements
- BA/BS degree with 5-7 years of relevant business development and partnership management experience.
- Experience in working with professional sports leagues, teams, and properties is a must.
- Strong understanding of media rights, content licensing, and video/highlights workflows.
- Strong understanding of news and the journalistic process.
- Experience in managing large-scale, multi-vertical partnerships.
- Proficiency in developing project plans, process maps, and project tracking.
- Experience managing advertising production workflows and teams while also direct client exposure.
- High level of professionalism; driven and motivated with excellent follow-up.
- Outstanding interpersonal and communication skills (both written and verbal).
- Extremely organized.
- Creative and strategic thinking skills.
- Ability to multitask and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment with colleagues based in New York, San Francisco, around North America, and internationally.
- Represent The Athletic brand well.
The annual base salary range for this role is $90,000.00 - $100,000.00 USD. The total compensation offered for this position may vary based on factors such as education, experience, skills, and location.
For roles in the U.S., dependent on your role, you may be eligible for variable pay, such as an annual bonus and restricted stock. Benefits may include medical, dental and vision benefits, Flexible Spending Accounts (F.S.A.s), a company-matching 401(k) plan, paid vacation, paid sick days, paid parental leave, tuition reimbursement and professional development programs.
For roles outside of the U.S., information on benefits will be provided during the interview process.
The Athletic Media Company is an equal opportunity employer and enthusiastically encourages people from all backgrounds and experiences to apply. The Athletic will consider all applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.
Click here to review our Applicant Privacy Notice, which describes how and when The Athletic Media Company collects, uses, and shares certain personal information of job applicants and prospective employees.
Beware of fraudulent job recruiting schemes! Our recruiters use [email protected] exclusively, and our team members will use an email address with @theathletic.com domain. We do not conduct interviews via text or instant message and we do not ask candidates to download software, to purchase equipment through us, or to provide sensitive personally identifiable information, such as bank accounts or social security numbers. If you have been contacted by someone claiming to be a member of the recruiting/HR team at The Athletic but operating from a different email address about a job offer, please report it as potential job fraud to the law enforcement and to [email protected].
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