Commercial Partnerships Director

With the Women's Rugby World Cup taking place here in England this year, it's an incredibly exciting time to join the RFU and working at the RFU means being part of the ‘bigger picture’ at England Rugby: to be rooted in our purpose, which is to enrich lives, introduce more people to rugby union & develop the sport for future generations. If our purpose resonates with you, and you recognise the value that sport can bring to people’s lives, we’d love to work with you. An opportunity has arisen for an exceptionally driven Commercial Partnerships Director to join our Commercial Partnerships team on a permanent basis.

Job Title : Commercial Partnerships Director
Department : Commercial Partnerships
Reports to : Executive Director of Commercial & Marketing
Direct report : 5x direct reports
Salary Banding : Competitive
Job Level : Lead
Location : HQ - This role is contractually based at Allianz Stadium, offering some flexibility to work from home
Employment Type : Permanent
Working Hours : This is a full-time role, covering 35hrs per week

Role-specific Benefits:

• Opportunity to earn a performance-related bonus of (currently) up to 25%
• £4,000 car allowance

Application Information:

• Please submit an anonymised CV (i.e. please exclude personal details). 
• The closing date for applications is 9pm on Sunday 2nd March 2025
• The RFU reserves the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications. 
• Applications may be considered whilst this vacancy is advertised.

The Role:

The Commercial Partnerships Director role reports into the Executive Director of Engagement & Business Growth and is accountable for growing and managing commercial revenues. The role will be responsible for implementing the long-term strategy for the department to drive revenue growth through partnerships, retail & licensing and new revenue sources such as digital inventory from new platforms. The role will oversee the business development processes with the newly appointed agency and all contractual obligations, develop new and creative ways to optimise partner relationships and create value for both parties as well as drive the Retail & Licensing business. The role requires a leader who can build, inspire and manage a team, setting high standards of performance.

What will you be doing?

Some key responsibilities include:

Business Development

• Work directly with our in-house agency to lead the organisation’s end to end sponsorship sales process to achieve and exceed agreed revenue targets.
• Shape a storytelling and data driven sales process, including category and rights assessment, lead development, pipeline management, profitability analysis and robust contracting.
• Ensure the RFU generates significant commercial partnerships support for key growth areas that include Women & Girls game, Stadium redevelopment, Community Rugby & Digital inventory.
• Work closely with key internal stakeholders to create new assets from our key growth areas that can be packaged and sold with our Sales Agency
• Work closely with Six Nations to drive media and sponsorship revenue growth while balancing central rights programmes with domestic Union initiatives. 
• Collaborate with Premiership Rugby (PRL), Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR), Team England, Tier 2 & National League Rugby (NLR) to help grow revenues into rugby creating relationships and coordinated propositions in key categories.
• Leverage strategy & insights research and business development intelligence support to drive lead prospecting and sales presentations. 
• Explore strategies for further commercialisation of the England Rugby brand, sponsorship assets and core properties globally through international partnerships.
• Work with Finance to create and manage the annual commercial budget, cost of sales budget, annual business planning processes and budget tracking processes. 
• Build senior relationships with key sports marketing sales agencies and media valuation agencies, projecting the RFU as a top tier rights holder in the market. Including, but not limited to, attending events, speaking at conferences, and representing the RFU at awards events.

Partnerships Management

• Develop long term individual partnership strategies that focus on quality of experience and high value client servicing of each partner.
• Build and maintain strong Partner relationships, regularly interfacing with senior stakeholders and involve senior management from the RFU when appropriate.
• Provide management s