Landing a Job in Sports Marketing with Steven Marques

Meet Steven Marques.

Soccer has been part of Steven's life for as long as he can remember.

His parents immigrated from Portugal, where the sport is woven into everyday life. Growing up just north of Charlotte, weekends revolved around watching Benfica matches with his dad, who still wears the club's crest tattooed on his arm today. Steven played competitively throughout his childhood, coached youth soccer while he was in college, earned his coaching license, and spent just about every free moment around the game.

Working in sports wasn't a lifelong dream, but staying close to the game was a non-negotiable.

Like many students, Steven wasn't exactly sure what that looked like. He spent a year at Central Piedmont Community College before transferring to UNC Charlotte, originally planning to follow his parents into the family construction business by studying construction management. One semester was enough to convince him it wasn't the right fit, so he switched to marketing and started looking for a way to combine that degree with the sport he'd loved his entire life.

That search eventually led him to Sports Endeavors, the parent company behind Soccer.com (formerly Eurosport) and World Soccer Shop.

If you grew up playing soccer, there's a good chance you remember the Eurosport catalogs showing up in your mailbox, or the hours spent scrolling through Soccer.com to find the perfect pair of boots. For Steven, the opportunity to intern there felt like a dream.

A college roommate sent him the job posting, then helped connect him with someone inside the company, helping to get Steven's resume in front of the right people. He earned one of just five internship spots selected nationwide and spent the summer living in Hillsborough, North Carolina, traveling the country supporting youth soccer tournaments for brands like Nike, Adidas, and Puma.

The experience was everything he hoped it would be.

He worked in the sport he loved, traveled across the country, and got his first real look at sports marketing. Even more importantly, he started building relationships with people working in the industry.

One of those relationships introduced him to AC&M Group, a Charlotte-based marketing agency that worked closely with Sports Endeavors. Before heading back to UNC Charlotte for his senior year, Steven reached out to see if they could use some help.

He was in luck.

He interned with the agency throughout his senior year, taking on more responsibility than most interns ever get the chance to handle. By the time graduation rolled around, staying on full-time felt like the natural next step.

Steven spent the next six years growing alongside the agency.

His first tasks as an intern were writing blog content and supporting grassroots marketing campaigns, but before he left he was leading the agency's largest sports accounts. Along the way he worked with brands like AT&T, Adidas, and New Balance, helping execute everything from nationwide youth soccer tours to Liverpool FC's preseason activations in the United States.

At an agency of roughly thirty people, there wasn't much room to specialize, everyone wore multiple hats. He was hands on with strategy, client management, and end to end sponsorship execution. A crash course in sports marketing if you will.

While he was building that experience, another opportunity was taking shape just a few miles away.

Charlotte had been awarded a Major League Soccer franchise, and for someone who had spent a lifetime around the game, it was the opportunity he had been waiting for. His hometown was finally getting a top-flight soccer team.

If you're interested in a career in sports marketing, one of the first decisions you'll encounter is whether to work on the agency side or the brand side. Both play an important role in the sports industry, but they approach partnerships from different perspectives.

Agency

Sports marketing agencies are hired by brands to develop and execute sponsorship strategies, campaigns, events, and activations. Because agencies typically work with multiple clients at once, employees gain exposure to a wide variety of sports, properties, and marketing initiatives.

Brand

Brand-side marketers work for a single company and are responsible for managing that company's sponsorship investments. Rather than supporting multiple clients, they focus on achieving one organization's long-term business and marketing objectives, often partnering with agencies to help bring campaigns to life.

Steven's career is a great example of how the two paths can complement one another. He began on the agency side, where he built a broad foundation across strategy, client management, and sponsorship execution before bringing those experiences to Ally's in-house sports marketing team.

Steven began exploring how he could get involved, first starting with the actual club, but then expanding his search when it was announced that Ally would become Charlotte FC's inaugural front-of-kit partner, the largest jersey sponsorship deal in MLS history at the time.

A couple of his former roommates worked at Ally, and Steven didn’t hesitate to reach out. They helped connect him with the sponsorship team, and just like with his first internship, relationships opened the door. This time, six years of agency experience made him the perfect person to walk through it.

After a handful of interviews, Steven joined Ally in March of 2020. Exactly one week before the entire world shut down.

Starting a new job is challenging enough. Starting one remotely while helping launch one of the biggest sponsorships in Major League Soccer added another layer entirely.

The move also required a different way of thinking.

For six years Steven had worked on the agency side, helping clients bring their sponsorships to life. Now he was the client, responsible for setting strategy, aligning internal stakeholders, and managing agencies similar to the one he used to work at. The transition wasn't always easy, but his agency experience proved invaluable because he understood exactly what good agency partnerships looked like and how to get the best work out of them.

Steven spent his first several years helping build Ally's Charlotte FC partnership from the ground up before expanding into a broader leadership role across the company's sports portfolio.

Today, he leads Ally's partnership with the USGA, manages the bank's relationship with the NWSL, and supports several of Ally's investments across women's sports and women's sports media. As one of the industry's most visible investors in women's sports, Ally has helped push meaningful change both on and off the field, and Steven has had the opportunity to help shape many of those partnerships.

Looking back, there isn’t one isolated moment that has defined Steven's career.

He stayed close to the sport that meant the most to him, kept putting himself in positions to learn, and built relationships that people wanted to invest back into.

The jobs changed, but the game never did.

Q. You started your career at a 30-person agency before moving to a Fortune 500 company. Looking back, how did those early years at a smaller agency prepare you for the role you have today?

A. I honestly think starting at a smaller agency gave me a huge advantage.  At a place like that, you’re not just responsible for one piece of the business…you get exposed to a bit of everything. Running client meetings, helping develop strategy, working with creative teams, managing production, and solving problems that came up every day. It forces you to become resourceful pretty quickly. I also learned the importance of building relationships early. Whether it was with clients, teammates or partners, sports is a small industry and your reputation follows you. Those experiences taught me how to communicate, earn trust, and think beyond just executing a project. Looking back it gave me a much broader perspective that’s incredibly valuable now that I’m on the brand side.

Q. Ally has become one of the leading investors in women's sports. What's it been like to help shape those partnerships and play a role in growing the women's game?

A. When I first started working on women’s sports, it felt like we had an opportunity to help build something rather than simply sponsor something that had already existed. Seeing the growth over the last several years from media coverage to the level of investment across the industry has been awesome. What I’m most proud of at Ally has been willing to think differently. It’s never been about putting just our logo on an asset. It’s about finding ways to help move the game forward, create better experiences for fans and athletes, and use our platform to elevate the sport.

Q. For someone who wants to build a career in sports marketing, what skills or qualities do you think matter most early in their career?

A. I think one of the most underrated qualities is being resourceful. Early in your career, no one expects you to have all the answers. What people do notice is how you respond when you don’t know something. Are you willing to figure it out? Will you do the research and come back with a solution instead of waiting for someone to tell you what to do? Sports move fast, and every partnership is different. The people who grow the quickest are usually the ones who can adapt, learn on the fly, and aren’t afraid to take on something they’ve never done before.

1. You don’t need to have it all figured out
Steven didn't start college planning to work in sports marketing. It took a couple of wrong turns, a change in majors, and an internship that aligned with something he genuinely cared about before the path became clear. Your first plan doesn't have to be your final one.

2. Relationships compound over time
Every major opportunity in Steven's career can be traced back to a relationship. A roommate shared an internship. A friend made an introduction. Former roommates helped connect him to Ally. Strong relationships don't always create immediate opportunities, but over time they become one of the biggest advantages you can have.

3. Agency experience builds a foundation you can take anywhere
Working at a 30-person agency forced Steven to wear a lot of hats early in his career. He learned strategy, client management, activations, and how to solve problems quickly. Those experiences prepared him to step into a global brand like Ally and lead agency partners from the other side of the table.

-AC&M Soccer Marketing

-Careers at Ally

Other agencies worth considering:

-Octagon (where I work!)

-MKTG

-Genesco

-CAA

-The Team

-Bespoke

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of So You Want to Work in Sports. I appreciate you being part of this community.

If you have ideas, feedback, or future guest suggestions, feel free to reach out at [email protected].

If you want more hands-on support as you navigate the start of your career within sports, book a 1:1 session with me here. The sooner you start preparing, the more confident you will feel when opportunities come your way.

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