Director, Sports IT Business Partner

Reports to: VP, Business Systems & Sports IT Business Partner

The Director, Sports IT Business Partner, owns the technology strategy, delivery, and operations for the business systems supporting TKO’s sports brands. Partnering with senior stakeholders across the business, the Director sets the direction for how technology enables sports operations, translating enterprise priorities into a coherent application strategy and portfolio roadmap. This role leads internal and external delivery partners, holding accountability not just for individual applications but for the health, performance, and evolution of the entire portfolio - from strategy and demand planning through delivery, operations, compliance, and continuous improvement.

Given the nature of TKO’s sports and live events businesses, the role operates in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment where event calendars, production cycles, and broadcast windows are non-negotiable. The successful candidate will demonstrate executive presence and composure under pressure, the ability to influence and align senior stakeholders, and the interpersonal awareness required to engage effectively across talent relations, global partnerships, sales & marketing, and live events.

The Director balances strategic leadership with the operational rigor to ensure the portfolio runs reliably and securely.

• Senior stakeholder partner and advisor serving as the trusted technology advisor to senior business leaders across the sports brands - communicating strategy, roadmap, tradeoffs, and outcomes to business leadership, and translating between business and technology.
• Portfolio strategy and roadmap owner responsible for setting the multi-year technology strategy and roadmap for the Sport Business Systems portfolio - aligning it to enterprise and brand priorities, partnering with the VP and senior business leaders to shape demand.
• Budget and financial owner owning the portfolio budget end-to-end - building and managing the annual operating and project budgets, forecasting and tracking spend, and making the build-versus-buy and investment decisions that maximize value across the portfolio.
• Vendor strategy and contract executive owning the strategic relationships with third-party application vendors and implementation partners, and partnering with Procurement, Legal, and Finance on negotiations, due diligence, renewals, and spend optimization.
• Delivery and program owner accountable for the successful delivery of projects and programs across the portfolio - establishing delivery standards and governance, overseeing project and program managers, and ensuring initiatives land on time, on budget, and to the quality bar the business requires.
• Operations and service owner accountable for the reliability, performance, and support of all applications in the portfolio - establishing the operating model and support processes, owning escalation for major incidents and outages, and driving service-quality and stability improvements across the estate.
• Governance, risk, and compliance owner owning the portfolio’s risk and compliance posture - partnering with Cyber Security on risk remediation and with IT Audit on SOX compliance and audit evidence, ensuring access governance and segregation-of-duties controls are designed and enforced, and representing the portfolio in governance and audit forums.
• Process and data quality leader championing current- and future-state process design across the portfolio, driving simplification of business and technical workflows, and establishing the standards and practices that keep data quality high across the applications.

• 10+ years in business systems, application management, or IT delivery roles owning enterprise business systems end-to-end - including strategy, requirements, delivery, application operations, and vendor partnership - with several years at a manager level or above.
• Proven people-leadership experience leading teams that include other managers and/or directing vendor and offshore organizations, with a demonstrated ability to set strategy, develop leaders, build organizational capability, and hold a team…