Senior Manager, Social Media

Summary

The Senior Social Media Manager, Soccer will lead how our brand lives and breathes within the global soccer conversation. This role owns the end-to-end social vision for soccer, ensuring every moment — from major tournaments and matchday energy to athlete stories, community impact, and everyday fandom — is expressed with clarity, authenticity, and cultural relevance.

Serving as the center of gravity for all soccer social activity, this role connects brand, partnerships, athletes, creative, and digital teams to ensure our social presence moves as one system. You’ll define narrative arcs, guide creative direction, and ensure our voice is consistent, human, and unmistakably rooted in the sport — not opportunistic or trend-driven.

With deep understanding of soccer culture and social-first storytelling, you’ll build scalable content frameworks that deliver both cultural impact and performance, while maintaining momentum across seasons, platforms, and partnerships. Your leadership ensures our soccer presence earns trust with fans, drives long-term relevance, and shows up with intention across every touchpoint in the social ecosystem.

Experience working in soccer or sports-led environments — brands, leagues, federations, agencies, or athlete teams — is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Creative Direction & Content Systems

• Own and evolve the long-term soccer social vision, aligning brand purpose, partnerships, and performance into a single, cohesive strategy.
• Define clear narrative arcs and storytelling frameworks across seasons, tournaments, off-season, and multi-year partnerships.
• Establish the soccer social operating model: roles, workflows, cadence, approvals, and escalation paths.
• Serve as the internal soccer culture authority, tracking leagues, players, tournaments, storylines, fan sentiment, and cultural moments to proactively shape content strategy.
• Lead social POV development for major moments (tournaments, athlete announcements, cultural conversations, brand moments) before they happen—not reactively after.
• Set standards for how the brand engages in soccer conversations, including tone, humor, purpose, and when not to weigh in.
• Translate business, marketing, and partnership goals into social-first strategies that can scale across platforms.
• Guide platform-level strategy (IG, TikTok, YouTube, emerging channels), ensuring each platform has a distinct role within the soccer ecosystem.
• Review and approve soccer content through the lens of cultural relevance, brand integrity, and fan trust.
• Identify white space opportunities within global and local soccer culture where the brand can show up meaningfully.
• Establish pre-game, matchday, post-game, and off-season playbooks to ensure consistency and clarity across all moments.

Partnerships, Athletes, Activations & Sampling

• Lead social execution for soccer partnerships, including athletes, federations, clubs, and grassroots organizations.
• Collaborate closely with Partnerships, Sampling, and Brand teams on major announcements, campaigns, and launches.
• Shape social plans for shoots, tournaments, events, and experiential moments—including coverage strategy and posting frameworks.
• Ensure athletes and partners feel represented honestly and respectfully within social storytelling.

Team Leadership & Process

• Establish clear workflows, planning cadences, and approval processes for soccer social.
• Partner with external creators and freelancers to scale output while maintaining quality and consistency.
• Advocate for resourcing needs based on scope, ambition, and opportunity.

Performance, Insights & Optimization

• Own performance reporting and insight development for all soccer-related social content.
• Translate data into actionable learnings to inform strategy, formats, and creative direction.
• Present insights and recommendations to senior leadership and cross-functional teams.
• Balance creative instincts with performance metrics to drive sustained impact.

Requirements

• 7–10+ years of social media experience, with a strong focus on sports, culture, or entertainment
• Deep, credible soccer knowledge across leagues, tournaments, players, and fan cultures (domestic and global)
• Proven experience leading social strategy for large-scale brand or sports partnerships
• Strong creative taste and editorial judgement
• Experience managing complex cross-functional stakeholders and senior leadership
• Comfort operating both strategically and hands-on
• Excellent communicator—clear POVs, strong narratives, calm under pressure
• Highly organized, proactive, and adaptable