Some interesting results from Marketing Week’s annual Career and Salary Survey which looks at how happy marketers are in their job sector where financial reward, potential career advancement and the appreciation of marketing’s value is concerned.
Gaming and gambling comes high up the list in both salary level and opportunity for career advancement, it’s also noted as the industry offering the best working environment. Sports falls considerably lower in satisfaction but middle in terms of actual salary.
Having worked on executive search briefs on mid to senior level marketing roles in both sectors I can say they share a common value, being the world in which they operate. Passion and enjoyment and the opportunity to work in a largely unscripted live event business is compelling. Over the years it has been seen as a privilege to work in sport, and I recall the horror when many years ago a long serving member of an athletics federation turned to one of the sports marketers that had recently joined them, and beaming with pride said "..you are very lucky to be here, in fact you should be paying us instead…"
Gaming and gambling has certainly matured and become recognised as enormously agile and very results orientated. Marketing roles are focussed on ROI and data analytics - desirable skills in all online marketing sectors making it a good bet for your career progression. Salaries are competitive but the real differentiator financially is in performance based bonuses which are significantly higher than most other industries.
Sports needs to up its game in terms of how to attract new staff and in many cases salary packages (pensions, healthcare, car, bonus levels etc) are very thin compared to the rest of the marketing industry, and this has made it harder to poach people from the non sports sectors that they are keen to hire from.
Read Marketing Week’s Careers and Salary Survey here.