Sponsorship Strategy Consultant - Freelance

Elevate is an award-winning global sports and entertainment agency founded in 2018 and the chosen growth partner for the world’s leading brands, properties, and experience-driven businesses. Through one integrated model, Elevate serves as the trusted advisor for more than 1,000 clients, helping them solve complex challenges and drive business wins.

What began in sports has evolved into a platform now serving clients across culture, attractions, culinary, and hotels. Today, Elevate brings operational expertise, data-driven intelligence, and world-class creativity together under one roof.

Elevate’s more than 750 employees sit across 14 offices around the world, from North America to Europe to Asia, and speak and write in 17 different languages.

For more information, visit us at www.oneelevate.com.

Elevate is looking for an experienced Sponsorship Strategy Consultant to work with us on a freelance basis, supporting a range of client engagements across the GCC and wider MENA region.

The successful candidate will bring deep expertise across sponsorship strategy and brand partnerships, with a strong understanding of how brands can use sponsorship to deliver meaningful business and marketing outcomes. They will ideally have experience working with a selection of the GCC’s leading rights holders, brands and properties, and be comfortable operating at both strategic and practical levels.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and/or support the development of sponsorship and partnership strategies for clients, translating broader brand and business objectives into clear sponsorship priorities.
• Advise clients on where and how to invest in sponsorship, including assessment of properties, platforms, rights holders, audiences and partnership opportunities.
• Apply a strong understanding of brand marketing strategy to identify how sponsorship can drive brand awareness, consideration, engagement, reputation and ultimately commercial impact.
• Develop sponsorship strategies, frameworks and investment approaches, providing clear recommendations and rationale to senior client stakeholders.
• Assess and evaluate potential sponsorship opportunities against agreed strategic criteria, including brand fit, audience alignment, geographic relevance, strategic value and commercial potential.
• Support the development of partnership propositions and activation strategies, ensuring that sponsorship rights translate into meaningful experiences and value for the brand.
• Develop strategic recommendations and implementation roadmaps, moving from high-level direction through to practical activation priorities.
• Define appropriate KPIs, measurement frameworks and approaches to evaluating sponsorship effectiveness and ROI.
• Bring relevant market intelligence and benchmarks to client engagements, including perspectives on emerging sponsorship trends, competitive activity and changing consumer behaviour.
• Work collaboratively with internal Elevate teams across strategy, partnerships, activation, creative and commercial disciplines to develop integrated client solutions.
• Present recommendations and strategic thinking confidently to senior client stakeholders, demonstrating the ability to simplify complex issues and build compelling cases for investment.
• Where required, support business development and pitch activity, contributing sponsorship expertise, strategic thinking and relevant market perspectives.

Experience & Expertise

• Demonstrated expertise in applying brand marketing and commercial strategy to drive sponsorship effectiveness and measurable business impact.
• Comprehensive understanding of the global sponsorship and partnership ecosystem, with particularly strong knowledge of the GCC and wider MENA market.
• A proven track record of leading or supporting sponsorship strategy development projects for major brands, from strategic direction through to implementation planning and performance measurement.
• Experience working with a range of rights holders, brands, agencies and commercial partners, with an understanding of the different perspectives and objectives within the sponsorship ecosystem.
• Strong knowledge of the GCC sports, entertainment, cultural and/or experiential sponsorship landscape, including key properties, rights holders and market dynamics.
• Ability to combine strategic thinking with commercial pragmatism, ensuring recommendations are both compelling and realistic to implement.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, with the ability to assess complex information and turn it into clear, actionable recommendations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience creating and presenting high-quality strategic deliverables to senior stakeholders.
• Comfortable working independently on a freelance basis, while integrating effectively into a wider consulting team and adapting quickly to different client requirements.
• A strong network across the MENA sponsorship and partnership ecosystem would be highly advantageous.