Advisory Board Bio – Malik Thomas

Malik Thomas is a Director of Corporate Partnerships at Playfly Premier Partnerships, a division of Playfly Sports. Playfly Premier Partnerships is an industry-leading sports marketing agency specializing in sponsorship sales representation and consulting. At Playfly Premier Partners, Malik works in the collegiate athletics naming rights consultation vertical. Malik works with collegiate athletic directors and their staffs to ensure that brands that adorn their facilities fit within the mission and culture of their college and university athletics programs.

Prior to joining Playfly Premier Partnerships, Malik served as an Assistant Athletic Director for Corporate Partnerships at UCF Athletics, where he led the sale of FBC Stadium naming rights. While at UCF Athletics, Malik was tasked with selling basketball court and football field naming rights, as well as the 3MG Club in FBC Mortgage Stadium. All told, Malik executed more than twenty-million dollars of contracted corporate partnership agreements during his six and a half years in the athletics department.

Malik hails from the Hudson Valley region of New York and after graduating from the New York Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY, he attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Remaining in Charlotte after graduation, Malik worked in event partnerships for the Black Cinema Café (a former division of FilmLife), University Programs and Enrollment for the University of Phoenix-Charlotte Campus, and an Account Executive and Social Media Manager for SMMC Studios, where he ventured into sports advertising sales. Malik would then go on to work for the professional indoor football franchise Charlotte Speed, as the Vice President of Business Development and an athletic apparel startup Rivalry Athletic Wear Company, as Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Malik’s greatest accomplishment is when he met and married his wife, Dawn (Reeves) a native Charlottean. Together they have two children: Mila and Andrew. Malik is an avid reader, sports fan, and is a volunteer coach at the Avalon Park YMCA.