Manager, Sports Marketing

GEICO•Bethesda, MD

4d•$109,675 - $172,200•Hybrid

About The Position

The Manager, Sports Marketing partners with the Sr. Manager and Lead to run GEICO’s league, team, school, and talent partnerships, with a focus on baseball and hockey. The role negotiates and renews agreements, manages partner relationships, and leads activation from strategy through launch and recap. It coordinates Social, Influencer, Creative, Analytics, Go-to-Market, Media, and Experiential partners around shared plans, while ensuring league- and team-level rights operate as a coherent portfolio and spending connects to business outcomes. This high-visibility leadership role includes direct exposure to senior leaders and responsibility for leading and developing team members. The Manager helps shape and scale the sports partnerships team, builds activation and measurement processes, and ensures partnership assets and contractual deliverables are fully utilized. The position is hybrid, with three days per week onsite at GEICO’s corporate offices in Bethesda, Maryland, or Manhattan, New York.

Requirements

At least 8 years of experience in sports marketing, sponsorships, or partnership marketing.
Direct experience negotiating and managing sponsorship agreements and leading cross-functional activations from planning through recap.
Experience negotiating or renewing sponsorship agreements, including asset valuation, pricing, exclusivity, and category protections, and working with Legal and Procurement.
Deep familiarity with baseball and hockey, including league-versus-team partnership structures, local market rights, and media, in-venue, and digital inventory.
Experience working in a conversion-driven service business, such as financial services, insurance, SaaS, or banking, where marketing is tied to customer acquisition and retention.
Experience managing senior-level relationships with properties, agencies, and vendors while driving execution across internal teams.
Ability to lead multiple concurrent initiatives with organization, precision, and follow-through in a matrixed environment.
Experience managing, coaching, and developing team members.
Experience managing budgets and using measurement and learnings to evaluate performance and inform renewal and investment decisions.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including executive-ready memos and presentations.
Comfort using AI tools such as Claude or Copilot to accelerate analysis, drafting, and workflows.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, sports management, communications, or a related field is preferred.
Experience on the league, team, or agency side of the sports business.
Direct relationships with MLB, NHL, or club partnership teams, or with agencies in the sports marketing ecosystem.
Experience with local market partnership strategy, including local media and broadcast rights.
Experience managing activations tied to experiential marketing or live events.
Experience building or scaling a team, including defining roles, hiring, and onboarding.

Responsibilities

Partner with the Sr. Manager to negotiate, renew, and manage GEICO partnerships alongside Legal, Procurement, and agencies.
Evaluate proposals and renewal terms, including asset valuation, pricing benchmarks, exclusivity and category definitions, renewal and matching rights, and rights gaps; develop recommendations and tradeoffs for senior leaders.
Build business cases for partnerships, explaining what is being purchased, its value, and its connection to brand and business objectives.
Manage day-to-day relationships with league and team partners, establish regular business reviews, and hold partners accountable for contractual deliverables; partner with the Sr. Manager on executive-level relationships.
Ensure league- and team-level national and local, media, in-venue, and digital rights work together as a coherent portfolio.
Own activation strategy, translating sponsorship rights and assets into plans aligned with brand and business objectives, including local market priorities.
Track partnership inventory, deliverables, and fulfillment against contracts; identify new activation opportunities and assets that are underperforming.
Lead cross-functional sports planning across Social, Influencer, Creative, Analytics, and Media, managing timelines, approvals, deliverables, and dependencies.
Work with internal creative teams and external agencies to brief, develop, and deliver activation assets that meet program needs and brand standards.
Collaborate with Experiential Marketing on sports-related experiential executions and ensure integrated planning and handoffs.
Establish standards for workbacks, trackers, activation plans, and status updates across concurrent initiatives, and ensure the team follows them.
Lead, coach, and develop team members by setting priorities and expectations, providing regular feedback, and maintaining high standards.
Assign workstreams, review work, and establish team standards for activation planning, tracking, and recaps.
Work with the Sr. Manager on team structure and growth, including role design, hiring, and onboarding.
Own measurement and reporting for assigned partnerships, define success metrics, evaluate performance, and use learnings to inform renewal and investment recommendations.
Manage budgets for assigned partnerships, including forecasting, invoice approval, and financial tracking.
Improve internal coordination and activation efficiency, and contribute to the team’s playbook as the function develops.