Head of Live Sports

Vibe; New York (NY); On-site; USD 132,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Variable pay

Health coverage

401(k) with matching

Flex PTO

Office in Flatiron

Parental leave

Annual offsite

Job summary

Vibe is a Walmart-backed streaming TV advertising platform building the next generation of live sports advertising. You’ll own live sports partnerships, the rate card, game-day setup, and the P&L, reporting to the CTO and co-founder Franck Tetzlaff. The role is based in New York, with relocation offered for great candidates.

You’ll hire a team, define sponsorship units, and shape platform needs for live sports while ensuring VPPA compliance and end-to-end deal execution from signing to game day.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in sports media with senior experience in live sports ad sales or partnerships.
• Negotiated live sports inventory or sponsorship deals and owned the revenue number.
• Fluency in PG, PMP and direct deals; knowledge of live inventory packaging and pricing.
• Experience hiring and leading a team.
• Experience collaborating with product, engineering, sales and legal to turn open problems into plans.
• Working knowledge of privacy limits in content advertising, including the VPPA.

Responsibilities

• Build senior relationships with networks, streams, leagues that hold live sports rights.
• Negotiate inventory commitments, rates, minimums, makegoods across direct, PG, PMP deals.
• Define sponsorship units, category rules for every partner deal.
• Plan the partner roadmap across the sports calendar, from regular season to tentpole events.
• Own the live sports P&L, with targets for revenue, margin, partners, campaigns.
• Build the live sports rate card, from partner cost to sell-side price.
• Track margin by partner, event, season to decide where to grow.
• Hire a team covering partnerships, pricing, deal operations.
• Define what live sports needs from the platform, from ad break scheduling to blackout rules.
• Represent partner approval flows, creative rules, reporting limits to product teams.
• Keep every deal inside the VPPA, with aggregate-only reporting, no identifier-based measurement.

Skills

Live sports ad sales

Partnership management

Revenue ownership

Negotiation

Team leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Programmatic deals

VPPA/privacy knowledge

Strategic planning

Pricing strategy

Job description

Streaming TV is no longer just a brand awareness channel. It’s becoming a core part of the performance marketing mix, alongside search and social. Vibe.co is building the platform that makes TV work like the rest of the acquisition stack: targeted, measurable, and optimized for results.

Vibe.co is an Audience First Streaming TV Advertising platform that gives marketers the tools to reach the right audiences, optimize campaigns in real time, and understand what’s actually driving business outcomes. With hyper-targeted segmentation, AI-powered recommendations, real-time optimization, and incrementality measurement, Vibe brings the precision and accountability of digital advertising to the biggest screen in the house.

Today, more than 12,000 brands use Vibe.co to reach 120 million+ households. And in August 2026, Vibe.co became a Walmart company, opening up a new chapter for the business and the industry. With Walmart’s first-party data and purchase signals now part of the Vibe platform, advertisers can connect TV advertising to real-world transactions and measure the impact of CTV with a level of precision previously associated with platforms like Google and Meta.

This is a unique moment to join Vibe. With Walmart’s scale, data, and reach behind us, we’re building the next generation of TV advertising and creating a more measurable, performance-driven future for the channel.

About the Role

You’ll build Vibe’s live sports business from the first deal. You join the Supply team and own live sports end to end: the rights holder partnerships, the rate card, the game-day setup, the team and the P&L. You’ll report to our CTO and co-founder, Franck Tetzlaff. We just launched Sponsorship, which lets brands book premium shows directly in Vibe, and live sports is next. You'd open live sports to thousands of performance and DTC brands that have never had access, own a business rather than a quota, and do it with Walmart's first-party data now part of the platform. The role is based in New York, and we support relocation for great candidates.

What You’ll Do

Partnerships

• Build senior relationships with the networks, streamers, leagues that hold live sports rights
• Negotiate inventory commitments, rates, minimums, makegoods across direct, PG, PMP deals
• Define sponsorship units, category rules for every partner deal
• Plan the partner roadmap across the sports calendar, from regular season to tentpole events

Pricing & P&L

• Own the live sports P&L, with targets for revenue, margin, partners, campaigns
• Build the live sports rate card, from partner cost to sell-side price
• Track margin by partner, event, season to decide where to grow

Team

• Hire a team covering partnerships, pricing, deal operations

Product

• Define what live sports needs from the platform, from ad break scheduling to blackout rules
• Represent partner approval flows, creative rules, reporting limits to product teams
• Keep every deal inside the VPPA, with aggregate-only reporting, no identifier-based measurement

Sales & Operations

• Package live inventory around the sports calendar for the sales team
• Turn advertiser demand into partner priorities
• Run every campaign from signed deal to game-day delivery, makegoods included

What You Need

• 12+ years in sports media, with senior experience in live sports ad sales, sports partnerships or programmatic supply
• You’ve negotiated live sports inventory or sponsorship deals with senior counterparts, and owned the revenue number
• Fluency in PG, PMP and direct deals, and in how live inventory is packaged and priced
• Experience hiring and leading a team
• Experience working across product, engineering, sales and legal to turn an open problem into a plan
• Working knowledge of privacy limits in content-level advertising, including the VPPA

Nice to Haves

• Experience with self-serve platforms or performance advertisers

Our Values

At Vibe, we run on three values: Impact, Ambition, and Urgency. We tie every goal to a real business outcome, think 10x rather than settling for good enough, and move daily rather than waiting for perfect conditions.

You’ll thrive here if you own outcomes without needing direction, default to action, and hold yourself to results, not effort.

This is a high-performance environment with high-performance rewards: you’ll work alongside people who push you, with real ownership over hard problems in a market that’s moving fast.

If that sounds like the best version of your career, we want to meet you.

What We Offer

The pay range for this role is $132,000–$264,000. For great candidates, we will support relocation to New York City.

At Vibe, we want you to build something, own something, and grow fast. Here’s how we back that up:

• Variable pay — Based on real Vibe business goals.
• Full health coverage — Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401(k) with matching — We invest in your future, not just your output.
• Flex PTO — Take the time you need. We measure results, not hours.
• Workspace worth showing up for — Our Flatiron office is full of natural light, we're in 3 days a week with flexibility built in, and our amazing workplace experiences manager keeps the space.
• Parental leave — Paid leave for all parents.
• Annual offsite — The whole team, once a year, somewhere worth the trip.

Our Interview Process

We respect your time. Here's exactly what to expect — no surprises, no ghosting.

• Recruiter Screen: 30 min. We'll share context; you'll share yours.
• Hiring Manager Interview: 60 min. You'll prepare a short brief beforehand based on a prompt we'll share, which shouldn't take more than a few hours to prepare, and which you'll present and work through it together on the call.
• Team Interview: Product Manager, Supply. 45 min on how live sports runs inside the platform.
• Team Interview: Sales. 45 min on packaging live sports for our sales team.
• Bar Raiser Interview: 30 min. A senior leader joins to ensure we’re holding a consistent, high bar.
• Offer: Fast. We don’t let good decisions sit.

Equal Opportunity

Vibe is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

We believe the best ideas come from teams with different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or interview process, please let us know.