Commercial Director

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Partner closely with senior leadership to establish commercial priorities, target categories, and go-to-market strategies aligned with long-term revenue objectives.
• Originate, structure, negotiate, and close multi-year corporate sponsorship, marketing, and hospitality partnerships with national and global brands.
• Drive significant new business revenue through strategic prospecting, networking, industry engagement, cold outreach, and relationship cultivation.
• Lead the full partnership sales cycle from prospect identification and consultative selling through proposal development, negotiation, and execution.
• Meet or exceed annual revenue targets, prospecting benchmarks, and pipeline development goals.
• Support annual budgeting, inventory planning, pricing strategy, and long-term commercial growth initiatives.

Partnership Development & Client Relations

• Build and maintain strong relationships with C-suite executives, brand marketers, agencies, and key industry stakeholders.
• Develop customized partnership solutions integrating sponsorship, experiential marketing, hospitality, digital activation, content, team and league assets, and fan engagement platforms.
• Establish innovative marketing and hospitality initiatives designed to enhance partner ROI and create premium race weekend experiences.
• Represent IMSA at race weekends, industry conferences, networking events, and corporate meetings to strengthen market presence and expand business opportunities.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Execution

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Brand Marketing, Digital Communications, Partnership Marketing, Administration, and Event Operations teams to develop partnership proposals that meet both prospect and organizational objectives.
• Maintain accurate sales forecasting, pipeline reporting, and account activity within CRM systems.
• Analyze industry trends, competitive dynamics, audience insights, and emerging categories to identify new revenue opportunities and inform commercial strategy.
• Support the development of future partnership products across media, digital, content, data, and fan engagement platforms.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• Directly oversees the Manager, Business Development, including coaching, performance management, and leadership support.
• Provides strategic direction and cross-functional leadership for commercial partnership initiatives and business development efforts.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Sports Management, Communications, or related field required.
• 10–15 years of progressive experience in sponsorship sales, corporate partnerships, business development, or commercial strategy within professional sports, motorsports, media, entertainment, hospitality, or related agency environments.
• Proven success generating significant new revenue and closing complex six- and seven-figure partnership agreements.
• Strong understanding of sponsorship valuation, integrated marketing partnerships, premium hospitality, experiential activation, and fan engagement strategies.
• Demonstrated ability to prospect, cultivate, negotiate, and close high-level business opportunities independently.
• Established executive presence with the ability to engage, influence, and present effectively to C-level stakeholders and senior decision-makers.
• Strong financial acumen, including experience with revenue forecasting, pricing strategy, and deal structuring.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, negotiation, and relationship-management skills.
• Self-motivated, competitive, and highly driven with the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, performance-oriented environment.
• Able to manage multiple priorities while maintaining attention to detail and executional excellence.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office and CRM platforms, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 or similar systems.
• Willingness to travel and work evenings, weekends, and race events as business needs require.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in motorsports, automotive partnerships, luxury lifestyle brands, or premium sports properties.
• Background working within a sanctioning body, sports league, team, media company, or global sports marketing agency.
• Existing network of corporate brand and agency relationships across key sponsorship categories.
• Experience developing integrated sponsorship programs across digital, experiential, hospitality, and media platforms.
• Knowledge of emerging trends in sports marketing, fan engagement, and premium partnership strategy.