Director, Player Marketing - Gaming

The Senior Manager, Player Marketing will be responsible for developing, owning, and overseeing the Red Bull North America Player Marketing program for gaming.

Red Bull North America is enhancing its approach to identifying, acquiring, developing, and marketing top gaming talent. A key objective of this program is to raise the standards for professional competitive players while also authentically increasing the profile of non-competitive players, such as gaming content creators and streamers.

To deliver breakthrough results, this role will work cross-functionally across all areas of marketing to leverage the full Red Bull marketing mix. The Senior Manager, Player Marketing will be accountable for the overall management and growth of the program, including both portfolio oversight and project execution.

This role requires in-office 4 days a week in Santa Monica.

Areas that play to your strengths

All the responsibilities we'll trust you with:

• Monitor global and national gaming talent landscapes, including key game titles, audience viewership, industry trends, players, and teams.

  Take full ownership of the Player Marketing funnel for the U.S. market—covering both the competitive side (professional esports players and teams) and the non-competitive side (streamers and gaming content creators)—from strategy, scouting, and negotiating with new players through to execution and activation via Player Projects.

  Develop the national Player Marketing business plan and collaborate closely with the five U.S. regions as they design and implement their Player Marketing initiatives, including briefing them, offering feedback, and serving as the main point of contact for Player Marketing across the country.

  Coordinate with the Global Headquarters in Austria to ensure that the U.S. approach is aligned and streamlined with global strategies.

  Manage and own the Gaming Player budget, ensuring that incentives are tracked, players are paid accurately and on time, and activations are properly scoped and costed.

  Partner with the Red Bull Media Network to develop and produce content featuring the players.

  Build and responsibly manage detailed project plans, budgets, and status reports across cross-functional teams for all player-related projects, competitions, and activations.

  Serve as the primary liaison for the Player program, ensuring full visibility, communication, and alignment among all Red Bull stakeholders, third-party partners, and vendors.

  Manage one direct report: lead and develop a Player Marketing Manager.

• Work closely with Athlete Marketing and regional Gaming Marketing Managers to ensure that our players are activated and utilized in an authentic and impactful way.

  Collaborate with the Legal team to draft and negotiate player agreements and contracts with players, team owners, and talent agencies. These agreements should clearly define performance expectations and terms, content and social media commitments, compensation structure, bonus schemes, branding rights, availability, schedules, and related conditions.

  Define clear objectives, goals, and KPIs for players, and track overall program performance, activations, community impact, and media engagement.

  Onboard new players, including in-depth training on the Red Bull brand, product usage, and communications. Set and monitor performance goals and implement ongoing management plans.

  Support and oversee athlete preparation, travel, and participation in gaming competitions or related activations to ensure their success and premium representation of the Red Bull brand.

  Continuously monitor the overall player roster to identify early signs of performance issues and provide ongoing feedback and guidance related to performance improvement, personality, and style.

  Define and take ownership of the overall player experience, itinerary, and schedule at Red Bull–owned and supported events.

  Partner with the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center teams to apply proven athletic performance improvement models, training techniques, and technologies to the player roster, including but not limited to developing a high-performance program for competitive players.

• Develop and lead innovative Player projects and activations that position Red Bull as an aspirational brand and thought leader in gaming.

  Create comprehensive branding and product-integration solutions and guidelines for all Players, using new and innovative design and visibility formats.

  Partner with content production, programming, and communications teams to develop Player-focused, story-driven media formats, as well as sponsored Player and third-party channels (e.g., gaming media and content creators).

  Collaborate with marketing, brand, sales, distribution, media, communications, content production, live events, and digital teams to develop and execute integrated consumer marketing campaigns related to Player projects, competitions, and activations.

  Use Players and activations to establish Red Bull as an authentic participant in competitive gaming (e.g., gaming-related “can in hand” moments and product consumption).

  Design and roll out activation guidelines, templates, and toolkits for regional teams to use when activating Players in local markets.

EXPERIENCE

Your areas of knowledge and expertise

that matter most for this role:

• 7+ years of professional experience in gaming, sports, talent marketing, technology, or a related field.
• A strong understanding of the competitive gaming landscape, including key game titles and publishers/developers, players and teams, community gatherings and conferences, industry stakeholders, gaming media, major events, and relevant technology developments.
• A high level of self-motivation and a strong sense of ownership and accountability, with a sharp ability to recognize what needs to be done and to take initiative.
• A creative mindset with a proven ability to design, document, and clearly communicate compelling player program strategies, tactics, and projects.
• Experience in designing and executing negotiations, as well as integrated talent marketing campaigns and activations.
• Strong communication and project management skills, including the ability to lead planning, scheduling, budgeting, resource management, collaboration, status reporting, and overall execution of plans across multiple stakeholders.
• The ability to thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic work environment.

• Travel 20-30%
• Permanent
• Benefits eligible