Premier League seeks new blood for sponsorship role

to divide the rights into six bundles of 23 matches, stipulating that no one company would be able to own all six.

The Premier League is looking for a senior marketer to oversee licensing and sponsorship deals.

The commercial executive will run the league’s licensing programme and manage relationships with key partners such as video games giant Electronic Arts.

Reporting to sales and marketing director Richard Masters, the job will also involve securing licensees and sponsors for the Premier League’s various properties.

The move follows the auction of the league’s most lucrative rights – its TV broadcast packages – earlier this year.

The European Commission ruled that the league had to divide the rights into six bundles of 23 matches, stipulating that no one company would be able to own all six.

Setanta, the Irish pay-per-view sports broadcaster, picked up a larger than expected share. It secured two of the packages, paying &£392m for the live rights to 46 Premiership matches over three seasons, starting in 2007/08.

Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB retained the most lucrative rights, paying &£1.3bn for 92 live matches a year. The &£1.7bn in revenue represented a 66% rise on the league’s previous TV rights deal in 2003, but chief executive Richard Scudamore said the deals were “only the start” of the league’s rights-selling process.