Position: Manager, Standards & Best Practices
Location: London, England, Europe or Florida, USA
Industry: Sports
Position Type: Full-Time
Salary: £70,000 - £80,000 + Bonus + Benefits
Contact: james.gershfield@forsythbarnes.com
International Travel Required
Forsyth Barnes are delighted to be representing a leading global sports organisation in the search for a Manager, Standards & Best Practices. This is a unique opportunity to play a key role in shaping world-class fan and premium hospitality experiences across an international portfolio of events. The position will focus on driving innovation, benchmarking global best practices, and developing scalable frameworks that elevate both spectator and corporate experiences across the organisation’s global event network.
Summary
The Manager, Standards & Best Practices will play an important role in elevating the spectator and corporate-hospitality experience across a global professional sports tour. This position drives organization-wide innovation by benchmarking global best practices, building shared frameworks, and enabling events of all sizes to deliver world-class fan and premium experiences. The role blends strategic influence with operational implementation, converting insights into practical tools, fostering collaboration across events, and shaping consistent standards that strengthen the brand. When traveling to events, the role also contributes targeted observations to support the overall Player Experience.
Responsibilities
Standards, Benchmarking & Best Practices Sharing
- Lead global benchmarking across sports, live entertainment, hospitality, and major-event industries to identify trends and innovations.
- Identify and define Fan Experience standards adaptable across diverse demographics and event types.
- Translate global insights into organization-ready best practices, templates, and decision guides usable by events of all categories.
- Maintain and evolve a cross-event Best Practices Hub, ensuring resources are current, high-quality, and widely adopted.
- Facilitate structured knowledge-sharing across events to promote continuous improvement to the fan experience and premium hospitality.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with internal teams including Tournament/Event Relations, Digital, Partnerships, Player Relations, and Media to align standards and share insights.
Event Lifecycle & Fan Experience Support
- Conduct diagnostic reviews of fan-journey and corporate-hospitality touchpoints.
- Identify scalable innovations adaptable for varying budgets and infrastructure.
- Advise events on tailored best practices for premium hospitality, Fan Zones, VIP hosting, suite design, on-court/event branding, and F&B.
- Collaborate with Partnerships teams to understand and meet partner expectations and develop hospitality best-practice assets.
- Work alongside travel and experiences partners to integrate and elevate premium fan experiences at events.
Data, Insight & Measurement
- Develop a consistent, organization-wide measurement framework to evaluate fan and corporate experience.
- Analyze cross-event data to identify trends, opportunities, and areas for improvement.
- Leverage insights to create presentations that illustrate key findings.
Training, Enablement & Community Building
- Participate in internal workshops organized by the Event/Tournament Relations Team.
- Develop training modules for guest services and hospitality teams.
- Lead knowledge-sharing sessions and produce rapid-learning briefs based on benchmarking insights and event visits.
Support to Player Experience Standards (Secondary Responsibility)
- When on-site at events, monitor overarching elements of Player Experience and Event Operations.
- Report observations for integration into broader player-focused improvement initiatives.
Experience & Skills
- Minimum of 5 years in sports, entertainment, live events, hospitality strategy, guest experience design, or a related field.
- Experience in benchmarking, insights, CX strategy, or premium experience design.
- Experience influencing stakeholders without direct authority.
- International sports and/or professional tennis industry experience is a plus.
- Customer-journey design, operational playbook development, and training delivery experience.
- Product development experience.
- Strong analytical and benchmarking capability.
- Creative and innovative mindset.
- Excellent communication and relationship-management skills across global teams.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel).
- Multilingual skills are a plus; English proficiency is required.
Travel
- International travel up to 50%