At 9 years old, Sophie duPhily (SM ’17) was roving around a cycling race in a golf cart, dropping off signs and “probably wreaking havoc,” she remembers with a laugh. That race was Delaware’s Wilmington Grand Prix, an event her entrepreneurial father launched in 2007 — with a smidgen of support from his young daughter.

With help from a Michigan Kinesiology degree in sport management, duPhily has turned her early experience in sports marketing into a career, albeit at an unexpected company: She’s now the associate director for sponsorships and growth at UnitedHealth Group (the parent company of UnitedHealthcare), where she deals frequently with athletes and sports teams that the company sponsors.   

“I think a common misconception is that if you want to get into sports, you have to work for a sports team or property,” duPhily says. “In one day, I could be working on Patriots stuff, meeting with the agents of our LPGA ambassadors, and then pivoting to work on our presenting partnership for the 2026 Special Olympics USA Games. One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to work with so many different properties.”

Learning the ropes
   
A lifelong sports fan, duPhily initially thought majoring in sport management would mean mostly studying event production. But at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology, she also learned about Olympic sponsorships and other ways global brands like Coca-Cola or Visa partner with marquee sporting events.
   
“I started thinking, ‘How cool to work for a non-sports related brand but be able to leverage sport to advance their mission,’” she says.

DuPhily had been recruited to U-M for lacrosse, and her coach nominated her for U-M’s Student-Athlete Advisory Council, which got her into conversations with the Big Ten Conference and the NCAA about how to best support athletes. She also joined U-M’s Advisory Board for Intercollegiate Athletics, where she advised the U-M Athletic Department alongside faculty, alumni, and other students.

“Michigan had an impressive sport management program but also had a really impressive athletic department,” duPhily says. “Engaging with that and seeing everything that makes it run really helped continue my interest and validated my decision to go into the business of sport.”

Problem-solving on the fly

Not everything went smoothly after graduation.

“I remember applying to a lot of inside ticket sales roles out of school, and I didn't get any of them,” duPhily says.

On a tip from a lacrosse teammate, whose mom worked at Pepsi at the time and knew that the sports marketing agency Genesco Sports Enterprises managed the company’s sponsorships, duPhily applied to a new entry-level role at Genesco. She’d listed her most recent occupation in her resume as “Attack, Michigan Women’s Lacrosse” — the offensive position she played for the team.

“I didn’t do it to be funny, but they thought it was, so they gave me an interview,” duPhily says.

She got the job working in Boston as an account coordinator for Genesco’s client Optum, a division of the health insurance and services company UnitedHealth Group (UHG). Optum partnered with professional sports teams to improve its visibility, promote new products, and connect with health care leaders. duPhily tracked the activation budget for those sponsorships and supported the related event planning and execution: placing food and beverage orders, tracking attendees, and hosting.

“We sponsored nearly all the Boston sports teams back then, so it felt like an event every other night,” duPhily says. “There were suite nights, baseball games, private golf clinics, etc.”

When UHG expanded its sponsorships and decided to staff an internal team, the company hired duPhily directly. Since then, she’s been managing UHG’s relationships with the New England Patriots and MLS team the New England Revolution via the teams’ event management firm, Kraft Sports + Entertainment. That can mean leveraging marketing materials and sponsorship opportunities, managing video interviews with sponsored athletes, or hosting current and prospective clients at games.

Working such events can certainly be exciting, but duPhily cautions that they’re still a lot of work. When UHG has an event centered around a 1 p.m. game, she’s at the stadium from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m.

“I think it’s important for anyone who wants to get into the industry to understand that if you’re working events you don’t have the luxury of enjoying it like a regular fan,” she says. “For Patriots games, I would say I maybe watch a few plays a game.”

Instead, she’s coordinating with event staff, rerouting lost attendees, and ensuring each attendee can network with just the right people.

“You have to be on your A game,” she says. “You're constantly problem-solving on the fly.”

Advice for the generations

DuPhily advises would-be sports marketers to take on internships with smaller, local events to gain experience. Gigs like fan promotions for a minor league baseball team or even volunteering at a local 5K, she says, have a direct tie-in to what she does in the big leagues.

“Help sell sponsorships, help hang up signage, deal with the different sponsors, set up the VIP tent,” she says. “You can do things that aren’t necessarily the level of, say, the NFL, but it’s the same skill set.”

After all, that’s how duPhily started, hanging up signs for her father’s small-scale event. Now, when duPhily Sr. asks her to help out, she has a bit more responsibility. She’s returned to the race to sling beer, serve as stage director, or even give some tips: When her dad pitched a local health care organization a sponsorship for a youth basketball tournament, duPhily suggested installing signs around the event with health recommendations from the sponsor.

“It's so cool to go back and connect what I do now to what I used to do with him as a kid,” she says.