Head of Marketing

Organisation

RL Commercial

Salary

Competitive

Location

Etihad Campus, Manchester M11 3FF

Contract type

Permanent (Full time)

Closing date

15 November 2026

Job Description

Head of Marketing
RL Commercial
Reports to: Director of Marketing & Communications
Location: Manchester
Team: Marketing, Creative & Design and Ticketing
The opportunity
Rugby League has some of the most compelling competitions, events, players and communities in British sport. Our opportunity is to grow their relevance, reach new audiences and turn that interest into deeper engagement, attendance and long-term fandom.
The Head of Marketing will lead RL Commercial’s marketing and ticketing strategy across Super League, the Challenge Cup and England Rugby League.
The role will be responsible for building our brands and audiences, delivering distinctive campaigns, driving ticket sales and attendance at major events, and ensuring marketing investment delivers measurable audience and commercial value.
This is a senior leadership role at the heart of our growth ambitions, combining brand building, audience acquisition, creativity, ticketing and commercial delivery.
Key responsibilities
1. Brand & marketing strategy
• Deliver RL Commercial’s marketing strategy across Super League, England Rugby League and the Challenge Cup.
• Lead the development and evolution of our brands and propositions, ensuring each has a distinctive position and clear role within the Rugby League portfolio.
• Develop annual marketing plans aligned to audience and commercial objectives.
• Translate the annual marketing plan into measurable milestones, resource requirements and agreed KPIs, and report progress, risks and recommendations to the Director of Marketing & Communications and senior leadership.
• Build the relevance and appeal of our brands among existing supporters, new audiences and casual sports fans.
• Lead major brand campaigns, launches and development projects.
• Maintain strong brand governance across RL Commercial, clubs, partners, broadcasters and agencies.
2. Audience growth & acquisition
• Develop strategies to grow and diversify the Rugby League audience, with particular focus on younger, casual and currently under-engaged sports fans.
• Turn research, customer insight and performance data into clear audience priorities and actionable marketing plans.
• Develop segmentation and acquisition strategies that move audiences from awareness and consideration to engagement, purchase, attendance and fandom.
• Work closely with the Head of Digital & Content, CRM and insight colleagues to connect audience acquisition with engagement, conversion and retention.
• Establish clear audience growth targets and continually optimise marketing investment against performance.
• Champion inclusive, representative and accessible marketing, with campaigns and customer communications designed to engage the widest possible audience.
3. Ticketing, major events & attendance
• Lead RL Commercial’s ticketing strategy and delivery across our major events, ensuring ticketing, marketing and CRM work together to maximise attendance, revenue and customer growth.
• Lead the marketing and sales strategy for the Super League Grand Final, Magic Weekend, Challenge Cup Final and England Rugby League fixtures.
• Deliver the attendance, ticket sales and revenue objectives, with robust forecasting and reporting against performance.
• Develop integrated campaigns that build demand, accelerate sales and respond quickly to opportunities or underperformance.
• Develop acquisition, conversion, retention and repeat-purchase strategies that grow the overall Rugby League ticket-buying audience.
• Use audience, pricing, sales and customer data to improve marketing and ticketing performance.
• Continually improve the customer ticketing journey, reducing barriers to purchase and creating stronger opportunities for data capture, cross-selling and repeat attendance.
• Work with Ticketing, venues and customer service colleagues to monitor customer satisfaction, identify and resolve purchase barriers and improve the end-to-end customer experience, including accessible purchasing and communications.
• Work with venues, clubs and relevant partners to ensure ticketing plans support the wider fan and event experience.
4. Campaigns & Shape of Season
• Lead the annual marketing calendar and campaign planning process across RL Commercial’s competitions and events.
• Create an integrated Shape of Season that builds momentum around fixtures, launches, rivalries, players, major events and the sport’s biggest moments.
• Develop distinctive campaigns that cut through beyond Rugby League’s existing audience and increase the relevance of our competitions.
• Work with Digital & Content and Communications to ensure paid, owned, social and earned activity is aligned around common audiences and objectives.
• Maximise campaign reach and impact through clubs, broadcasters, players and commercial partners.
• Build a culture of testing, learning and optimisation across marketing activity.
• Assess the responsible use of artificial intelligence, marketing automation and emerging technologies to improve campaign effectiveness, audience insight and operational efficiency, with appropriate human oversight and data safeguards.
5. Creative & brand development
• Lead RL Commercial’s creative approach, ensuring our brands and campaigns are distinctive, contemporary and effective.
• Set creative direction and standards across competitions, campaigns, events and marketing channels.
• Lead and develop internal Creative and Design capability alongside relevant external agencies and specialist partners.
• Establish clear briefing, planning and approval processes that improve the quality, consistency and speed of creative delivery.
• Champion ambitious creative thinking and new approaches capable of increasing Rugby League’s visibility and relevance.
• Evaluate creative work against brand, audience and commercial outcomes.
6. Integrated audience & commercial growth
• Work closely with the Head of Digital & Content to connect marketing-led audience acquisition and ticketing with digital engagement and retention.
• Partner with CRM and data colleagues to improve segmentation, personalisation, customer journeys and marketing effectiveness.
• Work with Commercial colleagues to maximise partner amplification and create greater value through campaigns, events and audience growth.
• Collaborate with Communications to create coordinated paid, earned, owned and social activity around the sport’s biggest moments.
• Build strong relationships with clubs, broadcasters, venues and commercial partners to maximise collective marketing reach and impact.
7. Leadership & delivery
• Lead and develop the Marketing, Creative and Ticketing functions, ensuring clear accountability and close integration between audience acquisition, campaigns and sales delivery.
• Create a high-performing culture that combines creative ambition with commercial discipline.
• Set clear priorities, objectives and accountability across the team.
• Lead relevant agencies and specialist partners, ensuring clear objectives and measurable value.
• Own relevant marketing and ticketing budgets, prioritising investment against audience, attendance, revenue and commercial return.
• Develop and monitor budget forecasts, control expenditure and provide clear reporting on variances, marketing efficiency and return on investment.
• Establish clear performance reporting across brand, audience acquisition, campaign effectiveness, ticket sales, attendance, revenue and return on marketing investment.
• Build strong relationships across RL Commercial and the wider sport, influencing stakeholders and creating alignment around shared growth priorities.
• Coach and develop team members through regular one-to-ones, performance reviews, learning and development plans and succession planning; foster an inclusive, accountable and collaborative working environment.
Experience & capabilities
Essential
• Significant senior marketing experience, ideally within sport, entertainment, media or another high-engagement consumer organisation.
• Proven track record of building brands and delivering measurable audience and customer growth.
• Demonstrable experience of driving ticket sales, attendance, customer acquisition or other measurable commercial outcomes.
• Strong expertise across brand strategy, integrated campaigns, paid media and customer marketing.
• Experience using research, audience insight, sales and performance data to inform marketing decisions.
• Strong creative judgement and experience leading internal or external creative resource.
• Strong understanding of CRM, customer segmentation and the role of first-party data in acquisition and retention.
• Experience managing budgets, agencies and specialist partners.
• Strong stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders and multiple organisations.
• Strong commercial judgement and the ability to combine strategic thinking, creativity and delivery.
• Demonstrable experience of leading, coaching and developing multidisciplinary teams, including performance management and talent development.
• Experience of financial forecasting, budget control and reporting against commercial and marketing outcomes.
• Ability to translate strategy into annual delivery plans, measurable KPIs and clear reporting for senior stakeholders.
Desirable
• Experience within a professional sports league, club, rights holder or major entertainment business.
• Experience marketing and selling tickets for major sporting or live events.
• Experience delivering sustained attendance and ticket revenue growth.
• Experience working across multiple clubs, teams, franchises or stakeholders.
• Experience collaborating with broadcasters, venues, media owners and major commercial partners.
• Familiarity with responsible applications of AI, marketing automation and emerging marketing technologies.
Personal attributes
Audience-focused: Understands audiences deeply and puts customer behaviour at the heart of marketing decisions.
Commercial: Connects marketing activity directly to audience, attendance and revenue outcomes.
Creative: Challenges convention, champions distinctive ideas and sets high creative standards.
Strategic: Turns insight and ambition into focused priorities and clear plans.
Collaborative: Builds trust and brings teams, clubs, venues and partners behind shared objectives.
Delivery-focused: Takes ownership, moves at pace and creates accountability for results.
Inspirational: Develops people and creates a culture of ambition, creativity and high performance.
Measures of success
Brand: Increased awareness, consideration and relevance of Super League, International Rugby League and the Challenge Cup.
Audience: Growth and diversification of Rugby League’s audience, with increased acquisition across priority segments.
Ticketing & Attendance: Growth in ticket sales, attendance, revenue and the size of the known ticket-buying audience, alongside improved conversion, retention and repeat purchase.
Campaigns: Distinctive, integrated campaigns delivering measurable audience and commercial outcomes.
Creative: Stronger and more consistent creative execution that increases the impact and visibility of Rugby League’s brands and competitions.
Customer: Improved acquisition, conversion and retention through stronger audience insight, segmentation and customer journeys.
Commercial: Improved marketing effectiveness and return on investment, with clear contribution to ticketing and wider commercial objectives.
Collaboration: Strong alignment between RL Commercial, clubs, venues and partners around shared marketing and audience-growth priorities.
Leadership: A high-performing Marketing, Creative and Ticketing function with clear priorities, accountability and measurable impact.
Governance & customer experience: Compliant, inclusive and accessible marketing activity, supported by improved customer satisfaction and effective management of brand and campaign risk.
Working Arrangements and Flexibility
The role requires flexibility to meet the operational needs of the business, including the following expectations: -

Hybrid working: A minimum of three days per week working from the office, with the remaining days hybrid, subject to business requirements.
Major Events: ability to attend and work at major events as required by the organisation.
Weekend Working; Flexibility to work weekends, particularly during major events and other key organisational activities.
Travel: Willingness ability to undertake national and international travel as required by the role.
RL Commercial recognises the enhanced creativity, performance, and legitimacy of an organisation that embraces and celebrates diversity and are actively striving to realise these benefits across the whole organisation. We recognise that to fully deliver on our mission and be true to our guiding principles, we must be representative of the communities which we serve.

We have committed to achieving gender parity and greater diversity across the organisation and strongly encourage applications from suitably qualified candidates from under-represented sections of the community, whether based on sex, gender, race, disability, sexuality, lower socio-economic groups, or other characteristics. We would be pleased to discuss our culture and commitments with any interested individuals. If you are an applicant with disability who meets the essential requirements of the job, we will interview you. Please declare this in your cover letter. We would be pleased to receive applications in alternative formats.
This role is full time and based in Manchester, however due to the nature of the role, travel and flexibility with hours may be required. RL Commercial supports a flexible and hybrid working environment.
If you would like to be considered for the Head of Marketing or have any questions, please email People.Team@rfl.co.uk with a CV and cover note/email outlining why you wish to be considered.
Applications close Sunday 15th November 2026

How to apply

If you would like to be considered for the Head of Marketing or have any questions, please email People.Team@rfl.co.uk with a CV and cover note/email outlining why you wish to be considered.

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