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.
About the Team
Launched in 2021, Fanatics Betting and Gaming is the online and retail sports betting subsidiary of Fanatics, a global digital sports platform. The Fanatics Sportsbook is available to 95% of the addressable online sports bettor market in the U.S. Fanatics Casino is currently available online in Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Fanatics Betting and Gaming operates twenty-two retail sports betting locations, including the only sportsbook inside an NFL stadium at Northwest Stadium. Fanatics Betting and Gaming is headquartered in New York with offices in Denver, Leeds and Dublin.
About the Role
Fanatics Betting & Gaming is seeking a VP, Strategic Payments to define and lead the payments strategy across our growing sports betting and gaming business. Payments are a critical part of the customer experience and our ability to efficiently scale the business, and this leader will be responsible for ensuring our payments ecosystem delivers a seamless experience for customers while supporting our growth, economics, and expansion into new markets.
This role will own the strategic and commercial side of payments, including relationships with payment providers, banks, processors, and other key partners. You will develop and execute a comprehensive payments strategy focused on improving deposit and withdrawal experiences, increasing payment success and reliability, optimizing costs, strengthening vendor performance, and enabling launches in new markets.
The ideal candidate brings deep payments industry expertise, strong relationships across the payments ecosystem, and experience taking payment capabilities to market. You should be equally comfortable negotiating with a major payment provider, evaluating payment economics, navigating banking and merchant requirements, and working with Product and Engineering teams to solve complex customer and business problems.
What You'll Do
Develop & Own the Payments Strategy
- Define and execute the long-term payments strategy for Fanatics Betting & Gaming, aligning payment capabilities with customer experience, growth, market expansion, and financial objectives.
- Identify opportunities to improve the customer deposit and withdrawal experience, including payment acceptance, speed, reliability, and availability of payment methods.
- Develop a clear roadmap for how our payments ecosystem should evolve as the business scales and customer needs change.
- Evaluate emerging payment methods, technologies, and industry trends and determine where Fanatics should invest, partner, or build.
- Establish clear success metrics and use data to continuously evaluate payment performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
Optimize Payment Performance & Economics
- Develop strategies to improve payment authorization and deposit success rates while maintaining a frictionless customer experience.
- Own the strategic evaluation of payment costs across providers, methods, and transaction types, identifying opportunities to improve overall unit economics.
- Partner with Finance, Product, Engineering, Risk, Fraud, and other teams to understand the drivers behind payment performance and develop solutions.
- Analyze payment flows and performance to identify friction points, operational challenges, and opportunities to improve customer conversion and retention.
- Balance customer experience, payment acceptance, cost, risk, and operational complexity when making strategic decisions.
Lead Payment Vendor & Banking Relationships
- Lead the payments strategy and go-to-market planning for expansion into new jurisdictions, determining the partners, banking infrastructure, and capabilities required to launch and operate including state-by-state regulatory, KYC/AML, and responsible gaming requirements.
- Own and strengthen strategic relationships with payment providers, processors, financial institutions, and other partners across the payments ecosystem, including partners such as PayPal and other major payment platforms.
- Serve as a senior point of contact for key partners, ensuring Fanatics receives strong commercial terms, service levels, product support, and strategic partnership.
- Lead commercial negotiations and vendor performance discussions in partnership with Business Development, Legal, Finance, Procurement, and other stakeholders.
- Develop a strong understanding of partner capabilities and use industry relationships to identify opportunities, resolve issues, and accelerate delivery.
- Understand the banking and merchant infrastructure supporting payment flows, including merchant IDs (MIDs), acquiring relationships, processing models, and how funds move into and out of the Fanatics ecosystem.
Enable New Market Launches
- Lead the payments strategy and go-to-market planning required to support Fanatics Betting & Gaming's expansion into new markets.
- Determine payment requirements, partners, banking infrastructure, and capabilities needed to successfully launch and operate in new jurisdictions.
- Work cross-functionally to ensure payment capabilities are ready ahead of market launches and identify dependencies or risks that could impact go-live.
- Leverage payments industry expertise and external relationships to navigate complex partner, banking, and market requirements.
Partner Across Product, Engineering & the Business
- Serve as the strategic payments leader connecting commercial priorities with our Product and Engineering organizations.
- Translate complex payment and business challenges into clear problem statements, business requirements, and priorities that Product and Engineering teams can act on.
- Clearly articulate the customer and financial impact of payment issues and build compelling business cases for investment and prioritization.
- Partner closely with Payments Engineering and Product Management to develop solutions that balance customer experience, technical feasibility, commercial value, and speed to market.
- Build strong relationships across Business Development, Finance, Operations, Risk, Fraud, Compliance, Legal, Product, and Engineering to drive alignment and execution.
- Influence across teams without relying on direct authority, creating clarity around priorities and driving initiatives through completion.
What We're Looking For
- Experience launching payment capabilities or supporting payment go-to-market strategies in new markets or jurisdictions.
- Demonstrated ability to manage and negotiate strategic relationships with major payment vendors and financial partners.
- Significant experience in payments strategy, payment partnerships, fintech, banking, payment processing, acquiring, or a related field, ideally within a complex consumer-facing digital business.
- Demonstrated experience developing and implementing a payments strategy at scale.
- Deep understanding of the payments ecosystem, including payment processors, digital wallets, acquiring banks, merchant relationships, payment rails, merchant IDs (MIDs), authorization flows, deposits, withdrawals, and payment economics.
- Strong payments industry knowledge and established relationships across payment
- Strong commercial and analytical mindset with experience evaluating payment costs, vendor economics, acceptance rates, customer conversion, and overall payment performance.
- Proven ability to work effectively with Product and Engineering organizations and translate business problems into clear, actionable requirements.
- Ability to communicate complex payment concepts in a simple and compelling way to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Strong executive presence with the ability to influence senior leaders, external partners, and cross-functional stakeholders.
- Comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment where priorities evolve quickly and teams are expected to move from strategy to execution.
- Experience in sports betting, gaming, fintech, marketplaces, e-commerce, or another high-volume digital payments environment is preferred.
What Success Looks Like
In this role, you will create a clear payments vision for Fanatics Betting & Gaming and turn that vision into measurable business results. You will improve how customers deposit and withdraw funds, strengthen our most important payment partnerships, optimize the economics of our payments ecosystem, and ensure payments are an enabler—not a blocker—as Fanatics enters new markets.
Most importantly, you will become the connective tissue between our payments partners, commercial teams, Product, and Engineering—identifying the right problems to solve, clearly articulating why they matter, and mobilizing teams to deliver solutions that improve both the customer experience and the business.
Depending on the role, your interview and onboarding experience may include in-person components, such as onsite interviews or Launching into Better: LIVE—a multi-day cultural immersion in New York City for full-time, non-seasonal hires. These sessions are designed to build connection and bring our culture to life, though specific travel and participation requirements will be confirmed based on your role and location. Your recruiter will provide clear guidance at each stage of the process.
For information about our benefits, please visit https://benefitsatfanatics.com/
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