Sponsorship Manager

We're Hiring: Sponsorship Manager

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior

Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a globally focused organization committed to developing strategic partnerships, sponsorship programs, events, and commercial opportunities across diverse markets.

Our teams collaborate across Commercial, Marketing, Sales, Events, Partnerships, Communications, Finance, Legal, Operations, and external organizations to create valuable sponsorship opportunities that strengthen brand visibility, audience engagement, revenue generation, and long-term partner relationships.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Sponsorship Manager to lead sponsorship strategy, partner acquisition, commercial development, activation, account management, and performance measurement.

The ideal candidate will identify and secure sponsorship opportunities, develop compelling partnership proposals, negotiate agreements, manage sponsor relationships, coordinate activation programs, and ensure sponsors receive measurable value from their investments.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement sponsorship strategies aligned with organizational, commercial, marketing, and event objectives.
• Identify sponsorship opportunities across events, programs, venues, campaigns, digital platforms, content, community initiatives, and strategic partnerships.
• Develop annual sponsorship plans, revenue targets, pipelines, and partnership priorities.
• Research potential sponsors and identify organizations with strong strategic, commercial, audience, or brand alignment.
• Build and maintain a qualified pipeline of prospective sponsors and strategic partners.
• Conduct market research, competitor analysis, industry mapping, and sponsorship benchmarking.
• Develop sponsorship packages, rights inventories, rate cards, proposals, presentations, and commercial offers.
• Create customized partnership solutions based on sponsor objectives, target audiences, budgets, and brand requirements.
• Develop sponsorship assets covering branding, naming rights, hospitality, content, digital exposure, media, experiences, activations, tickets, data, and promotional opportunities.
• Lead sponsor outreach, presentations, meetings, negotiations, and commercial discussions.
• Build relationships with marketing directors, commercial leaders, brand managers, agencies, executives, and partnership decision-makers.
• Manage the sponsorship sales process from prospect identification through proposal, negotiation, contracting, activation, renewal, and reporting.
• Negotiate sponsorship fees, rights, deliverables, exclusivity, territories, categories, payment terms, and contractual obligations.
• Coordinate with Legal and Finance teams to ensure sponsorship agreements are commercially and contractually sound.
• Maintain accurate records of sponsorship contracts, rights, deliverables, deadlines, payments, and partner commitments.
• Develop detailed sponsorship activation plans for each partner.
• Coordinate with Marketing, Events, Communications, Creative, Digital, Operations, and Production teams to deliver contracted sponsor benefits.
• Ensure sponsor branding, signage, content, hospitality, experiences, promotions, and other assets are delivered accurately and on time.
• Manage sponsor presence across physical venues, events, websites, applications, social media, newsletters, broadcasts, content, and other channels where applicable.
• Coordinate sponsor hospitality, VIP experiences, networking opportunities, client entertainment, and executive engagements.
• Develop creative activation concepts that generate audience engagement and measurable sponsor value.
• Support experiential marketing, branded content, competitions, sampling, product integration, and community activations where appropriate.
• Coordinate sponsor approvals for creative materials, branding, campaigns, content, and public communications.
• Monitor sponsorship delivery and identify gaps, delays, conflicts, or risks affecting partner satisfaction.
• Maintain regular communication with sponsors and provide proactive account management throughout the partnership lifecycle.
• Conduct sponsor reviews, business reviews, performance meetings, and renewal discussions.
• Collect sponsor feedback and identify opportunities to improve partnership value.
• Develop renewal and upselling strategies for existing sponsors.
• Identify opportunities to increase sponsorship revenue through expanded rights, additional events, premium assets, or multi-year agreements.
• Monitor sponsor category exclusivity and ensure contractual rights are protected.
• Coordinate sponsor invoicing, payment schedules, financial reconciliation, and outstanding receivables with Finance.
• Track sponsorship revenue, costs, margins, activation expenditure, and commercial performance.
• Develop sponsorship forecasts and monitor performance against revenue targets.
• Measure sponsorship return on investment and return on objectives using agreed performance indicators.
• Track brand exposure, audience reach, engagement, leads, hospitality usage, content performance, and other relevant outcomes.
• Prepare customized post-event and post-campaign sponsorship reports demonstrating delivered value and performance.
• Use audience, customer, digital, media, and event data to strengthen sponsorship proposals and renewal strategies.
• Maintain a sponsorship asset inventory and ensure commercial assets are accurately documented and available for sale.
• Coordinate with event and venue teams to understand capacity, inventory, programming, schedules, and activation opportunities.
• Manage sponsorship agencies, consultants, production companies, creative partners, and other external suppliers where required.
• Define supplier scopes, budgets, deliverables, timelines, quality standards, and performance expectations.
• Monitor sponsorship market trends, emerging categories, consumer behavior, media developments, and partnership models.
• Explore new sponsorship formats including digital, technology, sustainability, content, community, and experiential partnerships.
• Ensure sponsorship activities comply with applicable laws, regulations, brand standards, contractual requirements, and ethical guidelines.
• Identify potential conflicts of interest, reputational concerns, category conflicts, and sponsor-related risks.
• Maintain appropriate controls for confidential commercial information, sponsor data, contracts, and financial information.
• Develop sponsorship policies, approval processes, operating procedures, and governance standards.
• Prepare regular management reports covering pipeline, revenue, partner performance, activation delivery, risks, renewals, and growth opportunities.

Key Performance Indicators

• Sponsorship revenue
• Sponsorship revenue growth
• Sponsorship pipeline value
• Pipeline conversion rate
• New sponsor acquisition
• Sponsor renewal rate
• Multi-year sponsorship agreements
• Average sponsorship value
• Sponsorship gross margin
• Revenue per sponsorship asset
• Sales cycle time
• Proposal conversion rate
• Negotiation success rate
• Sponsor category coverage
• Category exclusivity compliance
• Sponsorship contract execution
• Sponsor activation delivery rate
• Contractual deliverable completion
• Sponsor satisfaction
• Sponsor retention
• Sponsor engagement
• Audience reach
• Brand exposure
• Media value
• Digital engagement
• Content performance
• Hospitality utilization
• Lead generation
• Activation participation
• Sponsor ROI
• Sponsor return on objectives
• Post-event reporting completion
• Invoice and payment performance
• Sponsorship budget adherence
• Activation cost efficiency
• Partner SLA performance
• Campaign delivery timeliness
• Sponsor issue resolution time
• Upselling and cross-selling revenue
• New partnership opportunities
• Sponsorship asset utilization

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in sponsorship, partnerships, commercial sales, business development, sports, entertainment, events, media, hospitality, marketing, or experiential marketing, preferably within an organization managing significant brands, audiences, events, venues, or commercial partnerships.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Proven experience developing and managing sponsorship or strategic partnership programs.
• Strong understanding of sponsorship sales, commercial rights, activation, and account management.
• Experience identifying prospects, building pipelines, developing proposals, and closing sponsorship agreements.
• Strong knowledge of sponsorship assets, rights packages, brand integration, and experiential opportunities.
• Excellent negotiation, presentation, pitching, and commercial communication skills.
• Experience managing relationships with senior marketing, commercial, brand, and agency stakeholders.
• Strong understanding of audience engagement, brand positioning, and marketing objectives.
• Experience creating customized sponsorship proposals and business cases.
• Strong financial awareness and ability to manage revenue targets, pricing, budgets, and margins.
• Experience managing sponsorship contracts and coordinating with Legal and Finance teams.
• Strong project-management skills and ability to coordinate multiple internal and external stakeholders.
• Experience delivering sponsor activations across events, venues, digital channels, content, or campaigns.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to demonstrate sponsorship performance using data.
• Familiarity with CRM, sales-pipeline, marketing, event, analytics, and reporting platforms.
• Strong account-management and relationship-development capabilities.
• Ability to identify new commercial opportunities and develop creative partnership solutions.
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Ability to manage multiple negotiations, deadlines, sponsors, and activation programs simultaneously.
• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.
• Experience working with international and distributed teams is highly desirable.