Identifying a Digital Marketing Director to accelerate global growth at SBC

Our headhunters have partnered with SBC, a global operator of B2B events in the gaming and sports betting industries, since early 2025. The team have supported the company with two key hires into their Senior & Executive Leadership team so far. The first of was a newly created Digital Marketing Director role. Following the successful appointment, we have since supported on a Chief Sales Officer role. 

Identifying a Digital Marketing Director to accelerate global growth at SBC

The story of SBC

SBC is a global operator serving the sports betting, gaming, FinTech, payments and entertainment industries. Founded in 2009 by Rasmus Sojmark, the business operates across three core divisions - SBC Events, SBC Media and SBC Advisory Partners - and employs more than 140 people globally from its London headquarters.

As the business entered a new phase of international expansion, SBC’s leadership team identified the need to evolve and centralise its marketing structure to support future growth across both its Events and Media businesses.

Challenge: Building a unified digital marketing leadership function

SBC partnered with 3Search Executive to appoint a newly created Digital Marketing Director, a strategically important leadership role designed to unify digital strategy and drive scalable international growth.

Previously, marketing activity had been led regionally through separate Marketing Directors. As the organisation scaled, the business required a single senior digital leader capable of aligning strategy, improving operational effectiveness and driving measurable commercial performance across multiple international markets.

Reporting directly to the COO, the role would lead a four-person team and take ownership of:

  • Global digital marketing strategy
  • Multi-channel acquisition and audience growth
  • Digital transformation across the marketing function
  • Channel optimisation and campaign performance
  • Content strategy and marketing automation

The successful candidate needed to combine strong strategic leadership with hands-on digital expertise across SEO, paid media, social, automation and AI-led marketing capability.

Given the scale and importance of the transformation, SBC required an executive search partner capable of delivering a highly consultative, data-led and discreet process.

Solution: Retained search delivered by specialist headhunters

We delivered a full retained executive search process, beginning with a detailed discovery and calibration phase to define the role mandate, leadership competencies and long-term success measures.

The search process included:

  • A comprehensive market mapping exercise across adjacent B2B and B2C sectors
  • Benchmarking senior digital talent across media, events and growth businesses
  • A live search tracker providing full transparency throughout the process
  • Weekly steering meetings to review progress, candidate feedback and market insight
  • A competency-led assessment process focused on leadership capability, digital expertise and cultural alignment

Dominic targeted senior digital leaders with proven experience driving international, multi-channel growth strategies and transforming marketing functions within scaling organisations.

Throughout the process, candidate engagement and employer brand representation remained a key priority, ensuring a high-quality experience for all stakeholders involved.

Outcome: Appointing a transformative digital growth leader

3Search Executive successfully appointed Alex Tanner as Digital Marketing Director.

Alex brings extensive experience leading data-driven growth strategies, scaling international audiences and aligning digital marketing activity directly to commercial performance objectives.

His appointment provides SBC with:

  • A unified global digital marketing strategy
  • Stronger alignment across Events and Media divisions
  • Enhanced digital capability across acquisition, automation and analytics
  • Leadership capable of supporting SBC’s next phase of international growth

The hire represents another successful executive leadership appointment delivered in partnership with SBC, further strengthening 3Search Executive’s relationship with the business as it continues to scale globally.

Jonathan Max, Director of People and Organisational Development
Embarking on this search was the first time I had engaged with 3Search, and I will admit I started cautiously. I had not worked with them previously and had also had some poor experiences with executive search firms in the past. However, I could see their pedigree and depth of experience in the market, and that gave me confidence. What really resonated was the cultural and personality synergies between our two businesses, which meant I felt they truly understood the type of individual who would succeed in our environment. From the very start, I was hugely impressed by Dom Warman. His work ethic was outstanding — highly contactable, always willing to go above and beyond, and showing a genuine ‘get things done’ attitude. He provided a highly extensive candidate map, left no stone unturned, and brought real rigour to the process. Dominic knew every candidate inside out, and the feedback we received from candidates themselves was that the experience they had throughout the interview process was absolutely befitting of our business. The whole process was enjoyable, efficient, and delivered with pace. In just five weeks, Dom and 3Search found us the ideal person for the role. We are absolutely delighted with both the outcome and the service.

Candidate Thought Count: 1

Hear from our successful candidates...

I recently worked with Dominic Warman at 3Search. One of, if not the best recruiter I have worked with. Hugely supportive, high level of contact, great transparency. Highly recommended.
Alex Tanner, Digital Marketing Director

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Michael Judkins Customer Experience & Growth Director

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