Ciara Murray is the Head of Marketing at Frasers group in Ireland, parent of the Sports Direct brand.

Sports Direct has been increasingly active in the sports sponsorship space with a programme for clubs in Cork GAA expanding to the sponsorship of the senior Football and Hurling teams, a partnership with the Ladies Gaelic Football Association that kicked off in 2021, and one with the KPMG Women’s Irish Open in September of 2022.

In 2023 she oversaw the addition of the Sports Direct Men’s and Women’s FAI Cups, the Northern Ireland Football League and only in the last week, Louth GAA.

She has been involved with the group for 20 years having joined Heatons Group in a marketing role in 2001.

The rebrand of Heatons Stores to Sports Direct has been added to by multiple high end new store openings over the past six years and the brand is now one of the biggest and most diverse sporting sponsors in the country.

See who else has been named on the list alongside Ciara Murray by clicking on the image below.

 

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See who else has been included so far on the list for 2023

This is the 11th edition of our Sport for Business listing of 50 Women of Influence in Irish Sport.

Read more about the list and nominate who you think should be a part of it in 2023.

We are proud to publish the list in partnership with AIG, an organisation that has pledged its commitment to equality in its partnerships with Gaelic Games, Tennis, Golf, and more, for whom “Effort is Equal” and with whom we have ambitious plans to extend the reach of this annual celebration of the Women who are making a difference.

This year’s list will be drawn as before from the worlds of leadership, partnership, storytelling, and performance.

We began this journey in 2013 when challenged that we would never be able to produce a list of twenty Influential Women in Irish Sport. The 20 stretched to 30, then 40 and 50 and it still does not do justice to the talent that is out there.

This year once more, to keep things fresh we will step up again, raising the number of new entrants to at least 40 percent of fresh names from last year.

It will be the hardest part to have some names replaced but if it was too easy it would be of less value.

The list we will build over the coming weeks is a snapshot of those women who are making a mark on how sport is played, consumed, grown, and delivered.

They are part of making the role of women in sport unexceptional by being exceptional in what they do.