Brand Development Lead

About the Role

As Brand Development Lead, you are where the magic starts. You are the thinker,  the person who defines what our brand stands for, how it should grow, and which partnerships and platforms will help it get there.

Reporting directly to the Head of Brand & Sponsorship and working as a peer to the Brand Marketing Lead, you will own the strategic foundations that everything else is built on. Brand positioning, architecture, frameworks, research outcomes - these are your domain. You set the standard and the direction; others bring it to life.

You will line manage our Brand & Sponsorship Manager, and together you will ensure our sponsorship function is run with rigour, ambition, and a clear commercial rationale. This is a role for someone who loves the intellectual challenge of brand-building as much as the commercial reality of making it pay

What you will be doing:

• Own and evolve global brand strategy in partnership with the Head of Brand & Sponsorship, ensuring it is applied consistently and effectively across all markets.
• Lead strategic brand initiatives including product branding, naming, tone of voice, and creative frameworks.
• Support local market teams with brand briefs, creative alignment, and go-to-market strategy.
• Ensure brand strategy is connected to business strategy — able to articulate how brand investment drives long-term commercial growth
• Own our global sponsorship strategy defining the criteria, ambition, and principles that guide every partnership decision we make.
• Build and maintain a rigorous evaluation framework for assessing sponsorship proposals, covering brand alignment, audience, activation potential and potential ROI.
• Audit existing partnerships to identify where rights are underutilised, where value is being left on the table, and where the bar needs to be raised
• Challenge proposals that do not meet our strategic criteria - regardless of the profile or prestige of the property - and build internal confidence in evidence-based decision-making.
• Work with Data and Insight teams to develop the measurement tools needed to assess sponsorship performance against meaningful brand and commercial KPIs.
• Produce clear, compelling recommendation documents that allow senior stakeholders to make informed partnership decisions quickly and with confidence.
• Support new market launches with brand onboarding, ensuring our brand framework flexes for different market needs
• Develop and maintain the brand guidelines, playbooks, and governance tools that enable markets to apply the brand confidently and correctly.
• Partner with local Marketing Leads to ensure global brand strategy translates into locally resonant market plans.
• Build strong working relationships with local Marketing Leads, Product, and Data teams - balancing global consistency with market nuance.
• Contribute to the development of the wider Brand team, including supporting and guiding junior team members as the function scales.
• Represent the brand confidently in cross-functional forums and with senior stakeholders.

We are looking for someone with:

• Proven experience in a senior brand role within a sport, betting, gaming, or fast-paced consumer brand environment.
• Strong track record in developing and delivering global brand marketing campaigns across multiple markets.
• Solid grounding in brand strategy - able to think long-term and connect brand decisions to commercial outcomes.
• Meaningful exposure to sponsorship strategy or partnership activation, with the ambition to develop further in this area.
• Experience working with agencies, production partners, and cross-functional teams in a matrixed organisation.