About Us
Founded in 2003, Adelaide United Football Club (AUFC) is South Australian’s only professional football club with teams competing in the A-Leagues and South Australian National Premier Leagues.
The Club exists for the people of South Australia, as a custodian for the game of football, and serves to foster the passion, pride, and purpose that football evokes within the community.
The Club’s ambition is to be the most engaged, respected, and successful football club in Australia.
About the Role
AUFC is seeking a Partnerships Manager to join our Commercial team on a full-time basis. Based at the Club’s Head Office in Hindmarsh, the Partnerships Manager will be responsible for managing all commercial deliverables for AUFC partners across match day, corporate hospitality, digital, community, B2B and B2C.
The Partnership Manager will enhance the partnership and client experience as well as the growth and engagement of AUFC’s partners and stakeholders.
Key to the success of the role will be maintaining best practice standards and developing strong working relations with all departments and partners to maximise outcomes for AUFC partners.
Key responsibilities include:
- Lead the end-to-end delivery of partner entitlements across match day, corporate hospitality, digital, community, B2B and B2C channels, ensuring a high-quality and consistent partner experience.
- Manage and execute all partnership deliverables, ensuring contractual obligations are met and exceeded, with a strong focus on value creation, retention, sales growth and upsell opportunities.
- Own and drive partnership renewal outcomes, with a primary KPI of partner retention, sales performance and year-on-year renewal value growth, including upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
- Coordinate and optimise match day corporate hospitality and partner activations, ensuring seamless delivery and premium experiences for partners and stakeholders, while identifying sales and upsell opportunities.
- Plan and deliver partner events, networking opportunities and business engagement initiatives that strengthen relationships and generate new sales leads and upsell outcomes.
- Develop and maintain high-quality partnership reporting, including insights, performance metrics and ROI analysis to demonstrate value and support renewal, sales and upsell conversations.
- Collaborate with internal departments (football, marketing, community, operations and venue) to ensure integrated and effective delivery of all partnership activities and alignment with broader commercial sales objectives.
- Support the development of compelling partnership proposals, presentations and renewal strategies that drive new business, sales conversion and upsell growth for both new and existing partners.
- Identify and implement opportunities to grow partner value through new inventory, activations and non-traditional revenue streams that support sales and upsell outcomes.
- Maintain best practice operational and administrative standards across all partnership activity, including signage, digital assets, collateral and campaign execution.
- Build strong, trusted relationships with partners and key stakeholders, ensuring a deep understanding of partner objectives and proactively identifying sales, renewal and upsell opportunities.
- Contribute to a high-performance, collaborative team culture, aligned with AUFC values of integrity, innovation and excellence
The successful candidate will be a proactive, positive and detail-oriented professional with a strong work ethic and a genuine passion for delivering high-quality partnership outcomes. You will bring a client-first mindset, combined with a commercial approach to relationship management, including identifying sales and upsell opportunities within existing accounts.
You will possess excellent interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to build trusted relationships with partners and internal stakeholders. A high level of organisation, attention to detail and the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment will be critical to success in this role.
Experience & Qualifications
- Tertiary qualification in business, management, marketing or a related discipline (preferred).
- 3-5 years’ experience in a client-facing, partnerships, account management or sales environment.
- Demonstrated ability to manage relationships while contributing to commercial outcomes, including renewals, sales or upsell activity.
- Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office and Canva (or similar design/presentation tools).
