Seth Cole is senior vice president of brand partnerships for Turner Sports. Within this role, Cole leads partnership development and activation across the Turner Sports portfolio of leading brands and league partnerships. Based in New York, he reports to Will Funk, executive vice president of property marketing and corporate partnerships for Turner Sports.
Throughout his entire 17-year career with the company, Cole has worked across all facets of the business, and has built up a unique expertise, starting as a marketing assistant in 2003 and moving up the ranks to his current position. He presently oversees a sizable team that specializes in driving new innovations, multi-platform partnerships, and business opportunities as Turner Sports has grown its multi-platform footprint to encompass the NBA, NCAA, MLB, ELEAGUE, and alternative programming and special events.
Cole also serves as the managing director of WarnerMedia Sports Partnerships, launched in January 2017 as Ignite Sports, which brings together the organization’s intellectual property, live events and experiential marketing, creative services and data solutions, to elevate a brand partner’s marketing efforts to the next level. In three years since WarnerMedia Sports Partnerships’ launch through 2019, Cole and his team quadrupled the amount of non-traditional advertising partnerships.
Cole graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree (cum laude) from Ithaca College’s Park School of Communications. He currently resides in New York with his wife Hannah and daughters Charley & Alex.
Turner Sports, a division of WarnerMedia, is an industry leader in the delivery of premium sports content across all multimedia screens. Turner Sports’ television coverage includes the NBA, Major League Baseball, NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, and ELEAGUE. The company also manages some of the most popular sports destinations across digital and social platforms including Bleacher Report and its top-rated app, NCAA.com and the critically-acclaimed NCAA March Madness Live suite of products, as well as an accompanying collection of mobile sites and connected device apps. Turner Sports and the NBA jointly manage NBA Digital, a robust collection of offerings including NBA TV, NBA.com, NBA LEAGUE PASS, the NBA App and NBAGLEAGUE.com. Turner Sports launched B/R Live in 2018 as a premium live streaming sports platform, serving as the central hub for both the discovery and consumption of live sports content. The streaming service allows fans to find and watch their favorite sports content anywhere, anytime and on the screen of their choice.