Department/Team: Business

Responsible to: Deputy Executive Director & Chief Operating Officer

Contract: 12 month Fixed Term Contract

Location: Mix of home working and from The Old Vic, 103 The Cut, London, SE1 8NB (min 3 office days)

Hours: Full-Time - 40 hours per week, including evenings and weekends as required by the events schedule in the fulfilment of the post’s duties

The Old Vic offers the ability to work these flexibly under the guidelines in our Hybrid Working policy. Additional hours may be necessary in order to fulfil the requirements of the post

Salary: In the region of £50,000 per annum

Direct reports: None

Benefits:

• Hybrid working for eligible teams and a company culture that promotes good work/life balance

• Enhanced annual leave, starting at 25 days per year, increasing by one day per year up to 30 days (plus bank holidays). Opportunity to switch statutory bank holidays to mark a religious event or festival

• Complimentary tickets for you and a guest to Old Vic preview productions

• Discretionary invite to Press Night performances and parties

• Free therapy from our therapy partner SelfSpace

• Mental health support via our in house Mental Health Champions

• Enhanced employer pension contributions with The People’s Pension

• Festive day – one discretionary additional paid day off around the festive period for a collective pause

• Time to volunteer – one day per year to support a charity or project of your choosing

• Commitment to learning, education and development

• Enhanced sick pay

• Access to interest free travel schemes including Cycle 2 work and Season Ticket loans after your probation period

• Family friendly policies and enhanced maternity/paternity/adoption/shared parental pay

• All staff social events

• Staff discount in Penny and The Old Vic bars as well as discounts in local bars and restaurants

• Opportunities to get involved with staff clubs and working groups such as the Inclusion Working Group

• Buddy schemes including New Starter and Parental buddies to support your induction and return to work after parental leave

Role Summary 

The purpose of the Head of Commercial Event Sales role is to manage all aspects of commercial venue hire across The Old Vic, and particularly within our new Backstage building, opening October 2025. It is anticipated that the spaces available in the building will lay host to a mixture of commercial private hires for conferences, parties, receptions and more, alongside our many internal Development events to aid fundraising, and Press Nights (which are managed by the Development team.)

There is a £0.5m income target relating to the commercial hires of the building, once the operation is established, and this role will be integral to maximizing the income to meet and hopefully exceed this target. As this is a new role, there will be a research phase which will involve scoping the possible commercial uses of our spaces, contributing to the development of a sales strategy, prospecting our target audiences, building our hires frameworks and costings, then resulting in booking commercial events within our new building from January 2026. The role will be both strategic and operational and the postholder will be driven to adapt well to both.

Your Team

This role will work closely with many teams, specifically: Theatre Operations, Front of House, Marketing & Commercial, Development, Technical and the Business Team.

There will be some administrative and operational support provided within our existing teams.

Areas of responsibility

The Head of Commercial Event Sales will:

Event sales

• Work closely with the Chief Marketing Officer to develop and implement a commercial sales plan to maximise hires revenue for The Old Vic event spaces.

• Develop sales collateral and campaigns alongside the Marketing team, including event photography, social media presence, web listings etc.

• Identify and pursue new business opportunities through networking, cold calling, and industry events to build a portfolio of client relationships.

• Manage commercial events income and expenditure budgets.

• To collate and analyse business data pertaining to all event activities, including client feedback.

• Proactively maximise income potential and profitable event hire occupancy.

• Manage site visits for clients, showcasing our spaces and services to maximise conversion to sales.

• Build and nurture long term collaborative relationships and partnerships with key clients to result in repeat bookings and liaise with Development on the propensity to build support for The Old Vic across its full list of opportunities.

Event hire operations and delivery

• Liaise with The Old Vic’s F&B team to create corporate and private events packages.

• Coordinate all commercial events, ensuring venue booking, set up catering, client liaison.

• Manage and coordinate the operational aspects of private hire and commercial activity.

• Collaborate with the operations, technical, front of house and event delivery teams to ensure the successful execution of events with the highest quality of service.

• To manage the competing needs of booking the space, discussing with Deputy Executive Director & Chief Operating Officer and agreeing any cases of event clashes.

• Ensure all hires are booked in Microsoft Outlook.

• To actively maintain a high level of administrative practices throughout all venue hire and event activity, ensuring meticulous detail throughout each step.

• To build strong relationships with internal stakeholders across The Old Vic.

• Liaise with internal and external caterers and contractors to ensure the successful delivery of all private hires.

• Undertake due diligence when working with suppliers to ensure confidence in service delivery

• Ensure suppliers adhere to The Old Vic’s Goods & Services Agreement.

• To always ensure the health and safety standards for events are maintained.

This is not an exhaustive list of duties and the Theatre's management may, at any time, allocate other tasks which are of a similar nature or level.

Person Specification

Essential

• Experience of successful commercial event sales and management

• Strong network of contacts within the events and corporate sectors and within London.

• Track record of achieving sales targets (of circa £400-500k income) and delivering a growth strategy.

• An understanding of Health and Safety regulations related to events and their implementation.

• Ability to work independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced environment.

• Detail-oriented with excellent organisational and time management skills.

• Flexibility to work early mornings, evenings and weekends as required.

• Experience of researching clients.

• Experience of managing financials relating to event hires.

• Acute attention to detail.

• Innovative and solutions focused.

• Excellent networking and customer service skills with a people-centric approach.

• Ability to prioritise a number of varied tasks and work to tight deadlines.

How to Apply

We understand that everyone is different and we want you to apply in whichever way you feel best shows your skills and experience. There are a range of ways that you can apply with us:

• 1. Sending a short video file of yourself (no longer than two minutes in length), detailing your experience, why you are applying for the role and what about working at The Old Vic interests you (have a look at the person specification in the job description).
• 2. Sending a short audio file of yourself (no longer than two minutes in length), detailing your experience, why you are applying for the role and what about working at The Old Vic interests you.
• 3. Completing our application form.
• 4. Uploading your CV and covering letter, explaining why you are interested in the role and working at the Old Vic.

As a Disability Confident employer, The Old Vic has made a commitment that all applicants with disabilities who meet the essential criteria for this job will be invited to interview. However in the event that we have a high volume of applications all of whom meet the criteria and identify as disabled, meaning it is not practicable to interview everyone, we may apply a weighting to the shortlisting criteria, or add an additional shortlisting stage before any interviews take place. In all cases we will take care to ensure that any criteria or weightings do not disadvantage disabled applicants.

All appointments are made subject to satisfactory references and proof of eligibility to work in the UK. 

The Process

The recruitment process for this role will be two stages:

• 1st stage virtual conversation
• 2nd stage in person conversation
• You may be asked to complete a work based skills assessment or challenge.

The closing date for this role is 14 April 2025. First Conversations are likely to take place w/c 28 April 2025.

Equal Opportunities

We actively support and encourage people from a variety of backgrounds, experiences and skill sets to join us and help shape what we do. We are particularly keen to receive applications from people of the global majority, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse and disabled candidates.

We may take positive action, in cases where candidates are equally qualified, to increase the employment of under-represented groups at The Old Vic.

In the event that we ask you to attend the theatre for a conversation and you are struggling financially, we may be able to reimburse you for any reasonable travel costs.

We partner with a range of inclusive organisations, to find out more please read our FAQs. 

FAQs

Read our recruitment and selection and equal opportunities FAQs here.