He previously worked in the advertising industry before moving onto Octagon, from there he was a founding member of Exp Sponsorship and in five years helped built it up to be the leading sponsorship agency in South Africa, by being voted the number one Specialist Marketing Services Agency by AdReview in 2009. He has also won numerous individual awards for his work.

Sampson has worked on a number of blue chip accounts but his passion is soccer having headed up numerous soccer properties as well as managing some of South Africa’s biggest soccer sponsorships like the Absa Cup and Coca-Cola Cup, the richest domestic tournaments in Africa, in their time. Sampson was also involved in Absa’s sponsorship of the Premier League; Bafana Bafana; MTN’s football portfolio; including the MTN8 and FIFA’S ticket fund for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

SAIL, recently underwent restructuring, consolidating MARC Group’s rights commercialisation businesses under one brand. Brand de Villiers, Group CEO at MARC Group, says “the Group is in the fortunate position of being able to make an appointment internally, showing the depth of management which has developed within the Group over the past couple of years.” He continued to say “he felt confident that SAIL will excel under Sampson’s leadership and will soon capitalise on the experience Sampson gained at Exp, the leading agency within Africa, by extending its operations across the continent.”

Sampson says he is excited at the opportunity and looks forward to the challenge of working with rights owner’s in the sport and entertainment industry and commercialising their brands to create more value for all parties concerned. He hopes to achieve this by being more creative in the way rights are packaged.