General Purpose:

As a Manager Sports Marketing adidas, you’ll be the face of the adidas brand and business within the football industry in Benelux, with a focus on both male and female players, plus top clubs in the area, with the aim of scouting, recruiting and servicing the best football player portfolio in the industry.

You are expected to deliver a portfolio that provides the requisite quality and specific individuals that meet the brand’s strategic objectives, including the highest quality of international football players. You will also need to facilitate the activation of those individuals to position adidas, in modern media, as being the most innovative and inspirational brand to the consumer. You will need to be a proven team player; stakeholder engagement is a key focus for this role as you will be managing relationships at all levels with our external partners.

Key Responsibilities - Scope: Develop and manage the best Football Players Portfolio:

• Ensure a consistent, knowledgeable and professional adidas presence at every club under his/her responsibility, visiting at least once every 7-10 days
• Developing and maintaining strong relationships with players, supporting staff, scouts and managers at each club and Federation
• Identifying, recommending and securing players that meet the brand’s strategic objectives, in keeping with the internal process, and liaising with line manager, team colleagues and other territory player managers at all time
• Attending regular matches at each club, senior and academy
• Communicating the footwear roll-out plans, ensuring all players support and promote the correct products at the right time on pitch
• Have complete ownership/accountability of players in his/her region for product supply and Gift of Kit, ensuring it is delivered on budget
• Fully manage the day-to-day servicing of each player, working with the necessary territory player managers, ensuring communication to relevant stakeholders
• Attending all meetings between Player Management teams and different functions within adidas (e.g. Athlete Activation, Newsroom, Brand Communications) to ensure consistency and contractual awareness
• Responsibility to maximise utilisation of players contractual promotional appearances, reactively and proactively seeking to activate players in collaboration with Athlete
• Activation teams and other relevant functions (Wholesale, Retail, AKAs, Newsroom etc.)
• Facilitate all activation requests (locally + globally) for his/her responsible players, ensuring players attendance, participation and high standards are met throughout the request
• Manage all football player budgets to budget, including the monitoring and approving of all invoices and uploading of player credit cards
• Play a proactive role in the team environment, including ways of working and idea generation
• Responsibility for player budget within region - ensuring responsible region operates within budget, monitor budget on a regular basis and update
• Lead high level / high value player negotiations of strategic importance with support of Director Football Player Management
• Drive and lead relationships with key player agencies, ensuring a flow of information to help with portfolio planning
• Supporting key operational decisions in team – kit drops, product seeding, operations + efficiency

Key Relationships:

Internal:

• Football Player Management & Scouting colleagues
• Sports Marketing teams (football clubs & federations, Sports Marketing operations)
• Athlete Activation teams (global & local)
• Global Sports Marketing colleagues, including Partner Integration team
• Football BU
• Athlete Services
• Brand Communications and other activation functions
• Newsroom
• Financial Controlling
• Legal & Compliance
• Operations (GOK Management)

External:

• Players
• Player representatives
• Football clubs – especially kit managers, academy/recruitment + sponsorship teams
• Agents
• Scouts
• Finance and legal teams
• Industry contacts

Requirements, Education & Experience:

• University degree in the field of Business or Marketing
• 3+ years of experience in the area of Sponsorship
• Strong industry knowledge of sport and football in particular
• Experience in negotiating within the sporting arena, especially Football
• Strong cross-functional experience across marketing & sales

Soft-Skills:

• Good communication skills, being able to communicate at all levels of the football spectrum, from the Agents to the Football Players at any Level
• Be able to build and maintain relationships
• Ability to work under pressure and manage multiple projects
• Ability to work well independently

Hard-Skills:

• Good level of knowledge on Socials and digital marketing
• Knowledge about reporting tools, KPI creation and extracting insights from complex dashboards
• Experience in working with Microsoft Office, especially Word, Excel and Power Point
• Fluent in Dutch & English both verbally and written
• Any other language is a plus