Principal Product Manager — Growth, Social & Community

Job description

## About Us Fanatics is building a leading global digital sports platform. We ignite the passions of global sports fans and maximize the presence and reach for our hundreds of sports partners globally by offering products and services across Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, and Fanatics Betting & Gaming, allowing sports fans to Buy, Collect, and Bet. Through the Fanatics platform, sports fans can buy licensed fan gear, jerseys, lifestyle and streetwear products, headwear, and hardgoods; collect physical and digital trading cards, sports memorabilia, and other digital assets; and bet as the company builds its Sportsbook and iGaming platform. Fanatics has an established database of over 100 million global sports fans; a global partner network with approximately 900 sports properties, including major national and international professional sports leagues, players associations, teams, colleges, college conferences and retail partners, 2,500 athletes and celebrities, and 200 exclusive athletes; and over 2,000 retail locations, including its Lids retail stores. Our more than 22,000 employees are committed to relentlessly enhancing the fan experience and delighting sports fans globally. ## The Role Fanatics is building a connected ecosystem where fans can move across Betting & Gaming, Collectibles, Live, FanApp and more, powered by a single identity, a shared loyalty system, and common product experiences. We are looking for a senior product leader to build the social and community layer of that ecosystem. This is a growth job. One fan meets us across our products and is alone in all of them. We pay to acquire them four times and we work to keep them four times. The room to grow inside what we already own is bigger than anything more media spend or an additional vertical would get us. Social is how we connect it. Fandom is a group activity and our products treat it as a solo one. Profiles, friends, groups, sharing, competition and status are the mechanics that bring acquisition cost down, carry a fan from one product into the next, and give people a reason to come back that isn't another push notification. The other half of it is knowing who the fan is. We know who someone roots for, what they collect, what they've sat through as a fan. That turns a cross-sell into recognition, and it lets us answer a moment in one product with something real from another. It's a network of fans who are known and connected to each other organically. You will own social end to end: the thesis, the roadmap, the mechanics, the growth numbers and the gamification layer that sits on top. ## Why This Role Matters Today our products are social in name only. Fans arrive alone, play alone, and leave without having met anyone. Every vertical acquires and retains its own users, discovery runs on merchandising slots rather than on what a fan's friends are doing, and identity mostly resets at every front door a user enters here. The result is separate funnels where there should be one network. As the product leader for Growth, Social & Community, you will: - Define where ecosystem growth comes from and which social mechanics unlock it - Build identity and public profile as a real product - Create acquisition loops that come out of the product itself - Turn shared experience into a retention mechanic the whole ecosystem benefits from - Make the value of a social lever measurable enough to fund Your work will directly affect blended acquisition cost, cross-product penetration and retention, Fanatics ONE membership and engagement, and the rate at which fans move from their first product into their second and third. ## What You'll Do **Own the growth thesis and the roadmap** - Write the point of view: where the growth comes from, which social mechanics get us there, what each one is worth, and the order to build them in. - Keep a live read on where consumer social is going and what it means for us. **Build acquisition that doesn't come out of the media budget** - Invite, referral and friend discovery built into the product rather than sitting next to it. - Sharing that fans actually want to do, which means moments worth sending rather than a share button bolted on - Social surfaces that put Fanatics in front of people who aren't customers yet **Connect the ecosystem through identity and the social graph** - Identity and a public social profile built as a real product: who someone is across verticals, who they root for, what they collect, what they're good at, carried with them instead of reset at every front door. - Reputation and a record worth showing off to all fans - One social graph that every vertical uses instead of each building its own. - Discovery driven by what a fan's friends are doing - A privacy model where being public is a choice and a safe one. **Design for moments rather than campaigns** - Fandom runs on highs and lows, and the ecosystem gives us both the signal to see them and the means to respond. - Work from context and not just behavior, understand what happened to a fan and how the fan feels about it. - Bring generosity, perfect timing, and a bias toward being on the fan's side **Build community that keeps people around** - Shared experience, including the plain fact of knowing that thousands of other fans are sitting in the same moment you are, sweating it together. **Own the gamification layer** - Progression that means something - Group and squad competition, what makes a fan recruit their friends. - A clear position on where rewards genuinely change behavior and how to introduce **Prove it with data** - Define what a social lever is worth - Density against retention, invite and share loops against acquisition cost, cross-product LTV, and what a second and third product per fan is actually worth. ## The Bar We are not trying to catch up. We intend to be where this happens for sports fans, and we have the fan base and the ecosystem to make that the clear outcome. You are expected to know what is shipping in that space before it ships, and to tell us what it means for us. You will be working with a small, strong, AI-forward team that moves quickly. Keeping pace with them is part of the job. In practice that means you prototype, you get something in front of fans this week, and you don't wait on a sprint cycle to think and make decisions. ## How We Measure Success - Reduction in blended acquisition cost attributable to in-product social loops - Share of fans connected to at least one other fan, and density on the surfaces that matter - Rate at which fans move from a first product into a second and third - Retention and engagement lift among connected fans versus unconnected ones - Fanatics ONE membership growth and login adoption across products - Adoption of shared social and identity components by partner teams ## What You Bring - Eight or more years in product, with real time on growth and real time on social, community or network products at consumer scale - Social products rather than social features. Things where the value came from other users, and you know how graphs get built - You've carried a growth number and can defend a roadmap to it - Both ends of the funnel. Acquisition and retention - The ability to write the narrative that gets a company aligned, and to sit with two engineers and a designer and get something in front of users this week