Athletic Outreach and Partnerships Intern
Sweetwine Enterprises
Remote | Fall Semester Internship Program
About Sweetwine Enterprises
Sweetwine Enterprises is a fully remote life-coaching company built exclusively for current and former athletes. We help athletes with confidence, identity building, goal setting, life planning, post sport direction and everything that comes with life during and after athletics. Our team operates across coaching, business operations, athlete relations, partnerships, media, and internal support to create an organized and dependable experience for both the athletes we serve and the professionals working within our company.
The Athletic Outreach & Partnerships Department directly supports the company’s growth by helping us identify athletes who may benefit from our services while researching organizations that could become meaningful strategic partners.
About the Internship
Sweetwine Enterprises is seeking an Athletic Outreach and Partnerships Intern interested in gaining hands-on experience in sports business, business development, market research, lead generation, partnership development, and startup growth.
This is not simply a social-media outreach internship.
Interns work behind the scenes to research athletes and organizations, improve the quality of our prospect pipeline, support targeted outreach initiatives, identify potential partnership opportunities, and help the company better understand the sports markets and communities we want to serve.
What You’ll Work On
Responsibilities may include:
- Researching current and former athletes across multiple sports, schools, organizations, and competition levels.
- Identifying athletes who align with current company outreach initiatives.
- Researching public athlete information using sources such as school rosters, social media, LinkedIn, athletic websites, and other approved public platforms.
- Verifying names, sports, competition levels, schools, social-media accounts, emails, and other relevant public information before adding research to company systems.
- Building targeted prospect lists based on a particular sport, athlete population, competition level, market segment, or company initiative.
- Supporting life coaches with targeted athlete lists when specific outreach assignments are created.
- Maintaining and improving the company’s Lead Pool by identifying incomplete records, duplicate entries, unclear competition levels, unusable contacts, and formatting inconsistencies.
- Helping ensure previously contacted prospects are properly documented and not unnecessarily duplicated.
- Researching athletic departments, sports organizations, athlete-development programs, sports businesses, and other organizations that could potentially align with Sweetwine Enterprises.
- Identifying appropriate public contacts and decision-makers within potential partner organizations.
- Evaluating potential partnership opportunities based on organizational fit, athlete population, shared interests, and potential mutual value.
- Preparing concise internal partnership research and recommendations for company leadership.
- Participating in special projects involving sports-market research, growth strategy, lead generation, partnership development, or new athlete segments.
- Communicating research findings, blockers, and noteworthy opportunities to the Department Lead.
Example Internship Projects
Depending on current company priorities, an intern may be asked to:
- Research athletes from a specific sport or competitive level.
- Build a targeted prospect list for a Sweetwine Enterprises life coach.
- Research current or former athletes going through a particular career or sport transition.
- Audit sections of the Lead Pool for duplicates or incomplete information.
- Research an underserved sport or athlete population that Sweetwine Enterprises could potentially reach.
- Identify sports organizations that align with our mission.
- Research an athletic department, sports association, athlete-development company, or sports organization as a potential partnership opportunity.
- Develop a simple Sports Partnership Research Project explaining the organization, who it serves, why it aligns with Sweetwine Enterprises, a possible partnership concept, and the best public decision-maker contact.
- Present research and recommendations for internal leadership review.
The department’s partnership projects are intentionally designed to build research, strategy, and professional presentation skills.
Professional Experience You’ll Develop
Sports Business & Business Development
Gain practical experience with prospecting, market segmentation, opportunity identification, athlete-market research, and business-growth initiatives.
Lead Generation & Pipeline Operations
Learn how a growing company builds, organizes, verifies, and maintains a prospect pipeline that can be used by other departments.
Market Research
Research different sports, schools, athletic levels, athlete populations, organizations, and market segments to support company growth.
Partnership Development
Learn how organizations are evaluated for strategic fit, how decision-makers are identified, and how early-stage partnership opportunities are researched before formal outreach occurs.
Data Quality & Research
Develop stronger attention to detail by verifying information, identifying duplicates, documenting sources, and maintaining organized company records.
Startup Experience
Work within a growing remote company where interns may contribute across changing priorities and see how research eventually supports larger business decisions.
What We’re Looking For
We are looking for students who are:
- Genuinely interested in sports, athletics, or the sports industry.
- Interested in business development, partnerships, marketing, sales, research, or organizational growth.
- Strong researchers who are comfortable finding and verifying information online.
- Organized and attentive to detail.
- Comfortable working with spreadsheets, databases, and structured information.
- Able to distinguish reliable information from information that cannot be verified.
- Strong written communicators.
- Dependable in a remote-work environment.
- Comfortable working independently while communicating regularly with a Department Lead.
- Willing to ask questions instead of guessing when information is unclear.
- Able to follow specific research criteria and submit review-ready work.
- Comfortable working in a startup environment where assignments may evolve with company priorities.
Preferred Qualifications
Preferred, but not required:
- Strong interest in sports business, athletics, athlete development, or the sports industry.
- Current or former participation in athletics.
- Experience working with a sports team, athletic department, student organization, club, or sports organization.
- Interest in business development, partnerships, sales, marketing, entrepreneurship, or market research.
- Experience using Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, LinkedIn, social media, or online research tools.
You do not need to be a current or former athlete to apply. A genuine interest in sports and the athlete community is strongly preferred.
Great Fit for Students Studying
This internship may be particularly valuable for students studying:
- Sports Management
- Sports Business
- Business Administration
- Marketing
- Business Development
- Sales
- Communications
- Entrepreneurship
- Management
- Public Relations
- Data or Business Analytics
- Organizational Leadership
- Exercise/Sport-related disciplines with an interest in business
- Related fields
Students from other majors are encouraged to apply if their interests and experience align with the position.
What You’ll Gain
By the end of the internship, interns should have practical exposure to:
- Sports business
- Athlete-market research
- Lead generation
- Prospecting
- Market segmentation
- Lead-pipeline management
- Database organization
- Data verification and quality control
- Partnership research
- Strategic-fit analysis
- Contact and decision-maker research
- Internal business proposals
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Remote professional communication
- Startup growth operations
Interns who complete appropriate assignments may be able to describe experience involving business development, lead research, pipeline operations, market research, partnership development, and startup operations on their résumé.
Important Role Boundaries
This is a growth and research internship.
Interns do not independently:
- Sell Sweetwine Enterprises coaching packages.
- Negotiate partnership agreements.
- Promise an organization that a partnership will occur.
- Commit Sweetwine Enterprises to an external agreement.
- Send unapproved partnership proposals.
- Represent themselves as authorized to make executive decisions on behalf of the company.
- Provide life coaching or mental-health services.
External partnership actions and major company opportunities remain subject to company leadership approval.
Our Ideal Candidate
This internship is especially suited for someone who looks at the sports industry and is curious about questions like:
How does a company identify the right athletes to reach?
Which athlete markets are being overlooked?
How do you build and maintain a strong prospect pipeline?
What makes one sports organization a stronger partnership opportunity than another?
Who is the right decision-maker within an athletic organization?
How can research eventually turn into business growth?
How can a startup build meaningful relationships throughout the sports ecosystem?
If you are interested in sports, business development, research, partnerships, and helping grow an athlete-centered company, the Athletic Outreach and Partnerships Internship provides an opportunity to work directly at the intersection of those areas.