Manager, Sports Marketing

GEICO•New York City, NY

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Manager, Sports Marketing partners with the Sr. Manager and Lead to manage GEICO's league, team, school, and talent partnerships. The role negotiates and renews agreements, manages partner relationships, and leads activation from strategy through launch and recap, coordinating Social, Influencer, Creative, Analytics, Go-to-Market, and Experiential teams. The manager ensures league-level and team-level rights work together as a coherent portfolio and that spending connects to business outcomes. This high-visibility role includes direct exposure to senior leaders and responsibility for leading and developing a team. The sports partnerships function is growing, with opportunities to help shape and scale the internal team. 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.
Demonstrated 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 and team partnership structures, local market rights, and media, in-venue, and digital inventory.
Experience 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 coordinating 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 the ability to prepare executive-ready memos and presentations.
Comfort using AI tools such as Claude or Copilot to support analysis, drafting, and workflows.
Bachelor's degree in marketing, business, sports management, communications, or a related field preferred.

Nice To Haves

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

Negotiate, renew, and manage GEICO partnerships in coordination with the Sr. Manager, Legal, Procurement, and agencies.
Evaluate partnership proposals and renewal terms, including asset valuation, pricing benchmarks, exclusivity, category definitions, renewal and matching rights, and rights gaps; bring recommendations and tradeoffs to senior leaders.
Build business cases for partnerships and connect rights and spending to brand and business objectives.
Manage day-to-day league and team partner relationships, establish regular business reviews, and hold partners accountable for contractual deliverables.
Ensure league-level and team-level national and local, media, in-venue, and digital rights work together as a coherent portfolio.
Develop activation strategies that translate sponsorship rights and assets into plans aligned with brand, business, and local market priorities.
Track partnership inventory, deliverables, and contractual fulfillment; identify opportunities to use existing rights and flag underperforming assets.
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, giving 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, role design, hiring, and onboarding as the portfolio and function grow.
Define success metrics, evaluate partnership performance, and use learnings to inform renewal and investment recommendations.
Manage partnership budgets, including forecasting, invoice approval, and financial tracking.
Improve internal coordination and activation efficiency, and contribute to developing the team's playbook.