Media Rights Manager

We're Hiring: Media Rights Manager

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior

Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a globally focused organization operating across media, entertainment, sports, content, and digital platforms. Our teams manage valuable content assets, commercial partnerships, distribution opportunities, and audience experiences across multiple markets and channels.

We collaborate across Legal, Content, Programming, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Production, Technology, and external rights holders to maximize the value of media assets while maintaining strong contractual, regulatory, and operational controls.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Media Rights Manager to manage the acquisition, licensing, exploitation, distribution, administration, and commercial optimization of media rights across television, digital, streaming, social, mobile, and other platforms.

The ideal candidate will have strong experience in rights management, licensing, contract administration, commercial negotiations, content distribution, and cross-functional coordination.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement media rights strategies aligned with commercial, content, audience, and market objectives.
• Manage the acquisition, licensing, renewal, exploitation, and distribution of media rights.
• Identify and evaluate opportunities to acquire or expand rights across priority markets and platforms.
• Manage rights portfolios covering sports, entertainment, film, television, digital content, events, archives, or other relevant media assets.
• Review rights availability, territorial restrictions, exclusivity provisions, platforms, languages, formats, windows, and permitted uses.
• Maintain comprehensive rights inventories and databases covering contractual and operational rights information.
• Coordinate rights negotiations with broadcasters, studios, leagues, production companies, distributors, platforms, agencies, and other rights holders.
• Support commercial negotiations involving license fees, minimum guarantees, revenue shares, advertising rights, sponsorship rights, and other commercial terms.
• Work closely with Legal to negotiate and administer licensing agreements, amendments, renewals, and related contractual documentation.
• Ensure all rights agreements clearly define territories, platforms, distribution methods, content categories, exclusivity, term, usage windows, and commercial permissions.
• Monitor contractual rights and obligations throughout the lifecycle of each agreement.
• Maintain accurate records of rights ownership, licensing status, expiration dates, restrictions, approvals, and renewal requirements.
• Establish processes for rights clearance before content is published, distributed, promoted, syndicated, or commercially exploited.
• Coordinate rights clearance for television, streaming, websites, mobile applications, social media, advertising, promotional materials, and other channels.
• Manage content windows, blackout periods, embargoes, holdbacks, exclusivity periods, and other contractual restrictions.
• Coordinate rights implementation with Programming, Content Operations, Technology, Distribution, and Platform teams.
• Ensure content is distributed only within authorized territories, platforms, time periods, and usage categories.
• Monitor rights compliance and identify unauthorized or potentially non-compliant usage.
• Support investigations and resolution of rights conflicts, claims, disputes, and infringement concerns.
• Work with Legal and external advisors to address rights disputes and contractual issues.
• Manage relationships with rights holders, licensors, distributors, broadcasters, platforms, agencies, and commercial partners.
• Develop strong long-term relationships with strategic rights partners and negotiate favorable renewal and expansion opportunities.
• Evaluate rights packages and commercial proposals using audience potential, market demand, financial value, strategic importance, and competitive considerations.
• Conduct market research and competitive analysis to identify emerging rights opportunities and changing market dynamics.
• Track industry developments affecting media rights, streaming, broadcasting, digital distribution, content licensing, and intellectual property.
• Support the development of business cases for major rights acquisitions and renewals.
• Prepare financial models and commercial analyses covering rights fees, expected revenues, costs, audience value, and return on investment.
• Monitor rights-related budgets, payments, revenue shares, royalties, and financial obligations.
• Coordinate with Finance to ensure accurate invoicing, payment schedules, royalty calculations, and revenue reconciliation.
• Monitor partner performance against contractual commitments, including delivery, reporting, marketing, distribution, and commercial obligations.
• Coordinate delivery requirements and technical specifications associated with licensed content.
• Ensure rights metadata is complete, accurate, and accessible to relevant internal teams.
• Develop rights-management workflows, approval processes, controls, and operating standards.
• Conduct regular rights audits to identify expired, unused, restricted, or incorrectly configured rights.
• Establish alerts and controls for upcoming expirations, renewals, contractual milestones, and critical restrictions.
• Support content scheduling and programming decisions by providing accurate rights availability information.
• Coordinate rights information for marketing, promotional, sponsorship, advertising, and partnership activities.
• Ensure promotional use of licensed content remains within contractual permissions.
• Manage sublicensing, syndication, resale, and secondary exploitation opportunities where permitted.
• Evaluate opportunities to extend the commercial value of existing rights through new platforms, territories, formats, and distribution models.
• Support archive and library exploitation strategies for historical and owned content.
• Coordinate rights reporting to senior management and relevant commercial stakeholders.
• Develop dashboards covering rights inventory, contract status, financial commitments, renewals, compliance, and commercial performance.
• Maintain appropriate confidentiality and information-security controls for sensitive rights and contract information.
• Ensure rights-management practices comply with applicable intellectual-property, broadcasting, data, advertising, and regulatory requirements.
• Identify opportunities to improve rights administration through automation, centralized databases, contract-management systems, and analytics.
• Provide leadership with regular reports on rights portfolio performance, commercial opportunities, risks, renewals, and strategic priorities.

Key Performance Indicators

• Rights portfolio value.
• Rights acquisition performance.
• Rights renewal rate.
• Contract renewal timeliness.
• Rights utilization rate.
• Rights revenue.
• Rights-related return on investment.
• Cost per acquired right or rights package.
• Revenue generated through secondary exploitation.
• Rights clearance turnaround time.
• Contract and rights data accuracy.
• Rights expiration management accuracy.
• Compliance with territorial and platform restrictions.
• Unauthorized-use incidents.
• Rights dispute resolution time.
• Contract obligation fulfillment.
• Partner performance.
• Royalty and revenue reconciliation accuracy.
• Rights administration cost.
• Rights database completeness.
• Sublicensing and syndication revenue.
• New market and platform expansion.
• Strategic rights partnership performance.
• Commercial forecast accuracy.
• Rights-related risk reduction.

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in media rights, content licensing, broadcasting, sports rights, entertainment, digital distribution, intellectual property, or commercial media operations, preferably within broadcasters, streaming platforms, sports organizations, studios, production companies, media groups, or entertainment businesses.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Strong understanding of media rights, licensing, intellectual property, and content distribution.
• Experience managing rights acquisition, licensing, renewals, and exploitation.
• Strong knowledge of territories, platforms, windows, exclusivity, restrictions, and usage rights.
• Experience negotiating or administering media licensing agreements.
• Strong commercial and financial analysis capabilities.
• Experience working closely with Legal, Finance, Content, Programming, Sales, and Technology teams.
• Excellent contract-management and documentation skills.
• Strong relationship-management and negotiation capabilities.
• Experience managing rights databases, contract-management systems, or content-management platforms.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent attention to detail and ability to manage complex contractual information.
• Strong understanding of digital, streaming, social, and emerging media distribution models.
• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.
• Ability to manage multiple rights portfolios, negotiations, renewals, deadlines, and stakeholders simultaneously.
• Experience with international media rights and multi-territory agreements is highly desirable.