Sarah Batters is the former Director of Marketing & Partnerships at Southampton Football Club, with 17 years of diverse experience across branding, commercial marketing, digital media, partnership sales and management. Her career to date has spanned 10 countries across Europe, ANZ and Asia resulting in broad consumer and market experience across client side (P&G), agency and rights holder roles.
Sarah’s broad experience and expertise has produced fantastic results as she is able to marry up true consumer insight with innovative marketing strategies, that result in excellent commercial returns for both club and sponsors. Within her previous role, Sarah was responsible for growing commercial revenue via club partnerships and to attract new and retain existing Saints fans, to grow the club’s commercial revenue through ticketing, hospitality, events and retail.
During her time at Southampton FC Sarah and her team led the way to securing a record front of shirt sponsorship deal with Sportsbet and a landmark record Championship Women’s team front of shirt sponsorship with Starling Bank. Sarah also introduced the first Sustainability Partner to the club with Ecowatt, the global climate impact platform for renewable energy, climate action & social impact projects.
Sarah and her team have been well recognised for their innovative marketing campaigns for both club and sponsors, experimenting with tech to engage fans in new ways – launching the world’s first AR enabled football kits, the first club shirt NFTs, giving fans the chance to win a bitcoin and more recently recognised for the most personalised season ticket campaign taking nearly 30,000 fan’s data into a bespoke algorithm which was used to create a customised video highlighting their statistics from the season, from the number of miles travelled to the number of goals witnessed and more.
Sarah has a huge passion for women’s football, and has been a strong voice in how to commercialise the women’s game. In her time at Southampton, Sarah and her team grew average attendance of a Saints Women’s home games from 400 to 3000, the highest in the Women’s Championship, and worked with Starling Bank to grow the number of female coaches in the game.
Sarah’s passion extends her work into the community where she coaches Chipstead Wildcats U8’s girls’ team. Sarah has an unmatched commitment to the community and as a female in a male dominated industry, she has taken a leading role in promoting women’s football and promoting greater diversity both in Southampton FC and the industry as a whole.