How can Leeds benefit off the field from USMNT captain Tyler Adams ahead of 2026 World Cup? - The Athletic 30/12/22

By Phil Hay

In the space of a few weeks, more than six million people have watched 13 seconds of Tyler Adams playing ball with Joe Biden. Support for the US men’s national team came right from the top before their last-16 defeat to the Netherlands at the World Cup via a video published on the president’s official Twitter account. ‘Go USA’ was the message, with Biden wrapped in a US scarf.

For Leeds United, it created the surreal experience of seeing their captain and the POTUS rubbing shoulders. Lucas Radebe, Leeds’ former South Africa international, famously enjoyed the company of Nelson Mandela, but the club are unaccustomed to seeing their players move in these circles, of receiving global attention beyond football’s heartlands. Adams on a Twitter account with 28 million followers gave his English team a taste of the exposure by association.

The 2022 World Cup is done and for now, the international game is packing up and making way for the club game again. FIFA’s showpiece competition will lie dormant until it returns with a vengeance in 2026, the date of the biggest World Cup ever planned. Forty-eight nations will take part in three-and-a-half years’ time, in 16 cities across the whole of North America, a gluttonous feast of sporting and commercial interests. Eleven of those cities are based in the US and as such, the USMNT can think of it as their home tournament, back there for the first time since 1994. It is hard to overstate the way in which football there has changed in 28 years.

Adams wore the USMNT armband in Qatar and his election as captain via a dressing-room vote, combined with strong performances over four games, consolidated his reputation as an emerging talisman in their dressing room. He is young still, with the potential to improve significantly from here, and as it stands, he is an asset for Leeds in two forms: the feisty midfielder they need in their line-up but also the US skipper with a World Cup in the States on the horizon. At face value, the second aspect is a gift to them — a way of tapping deeper into a country and a market where the club want their own profile to grow. Commercially, Adams sounds like an American dream.

The 23-year-old is fairly new to Elland Road having signed from RB Leipzig last summer, and Leeds’ interest in breaking the States began to develop long before Adams arrived. The investment arm of the San Francisco 49ers bought into the club in 2018 and, having increased its stake steadily over the past four years, is on course to complete a full buy-out in 2023. Leeds’ head coach, Jesse Marsch, is American born and bred and Adams became the second USMNT player to join the club after Brenden Aaronson. The creep of awareness over the Atlantic has been such that research published by Stamford University suggested Leeds are now among the 10 English sides with the most followers in the US.

Football, though, is still fighting to crack America properly, despite the success of Major League Soccer and notable spikes in TV viewing figures (significantly, Apple is about to start a new broadcast partnership with MLS, agreed for the next 10 years and worth $250m a season). Biden made light of that when, in his video with Adams, he looked at the camera and said, “It’s called soccer”. A survey conducted by Morning Consult found that 65 per cent of the American adults it polled were unaware that North America was due to host the World Cup in 2026.

“If you’re an avid soccer fan then obviously you know it’s coming,” says Vijay Setlur, a consultant for CONCACAF and marketing instructor at York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada. “If you’re not an avid fan then you probably don’t, so I can understand why so many people in the US are saying that. There haven’t been any major marketing campaigns for 2026 yet, from the US organising committee or major sponsors, but that’s partly because they’ve been waiting for the World Cup in Qatar to finish. With the final done, the clock starts to tick.”

Promotion and sponsorship of the 2026 finals will be huge — on a different scale to every previous tournament. FIFA thinks it will earn a profit of $11billion from it. How much, then, could Adams be worth commercially to Leeds in the run-up to the tournament? How easy, or otherwise, will it be for Leeds to use the presence of the USMNT captain — in theory, the face of the squad — on the books at Elland Road to expand their supporter base in the US and create new commercial opportunities? Is it as simple as Adams’ status turning more and more fans in his club’s direction?

For a while now, Chelsea’s Christian Pulisic has been the star of the US team, the marketable figure who some see as the most talented footballer the USMNT have ever had. “In the run-up to the World Cup in Qatar, the two players who were the faces of the team were Pulisic and Weston McKennie,” says Roger Bennett, a journalist and broadcaster who co-hosts the Men in Blazers football podcast. “Pulisic is the closest thing the United States have to a household name, a player who can score and create and deliver American gold, with highlight clips that run on repeat.

“The fact he’s struggled for first-team minutes (at Chelsea) hasn’t registered with the brands over here. He’s been omnipresent in commercials from Volkswagen to Bose and Puma. Since the age of 17, he felt like the prince who was promised over here.”

Prior to Qatar, Adams did not have anything like the same magnetism, although Bennett says that over the course of the tournament “no American player grew in stature and profile more than Tyler”. What happens from here will depend in no small way on how much the 2026 World Cup grips the States. Setlur still sees football there waging its traditional battle for attention, overshadowed by the conventionally dominant sports of gridiron, basketball and baseball.

“Those leagues are behemoths, so for football it can be hard to make itself seen,” he says. “People in the US who follow football really closely are going to know who Tyler Adams is, but more casual observers? At this stage, I’m not so sure. The casual observers probably don’t know much about him or Leeds.

“So it’s a good thing he’s captain because he’s less obscure than a Tim Ream, for example, but he’s not a goalscorer like Pulisic and he’s not a household name right now. Unlike Pulisic, you’ve got to be a diehard soccer fan for Adams to be really familiar. The US isn’t like England where every single player is analysed to death. But I do think the next World Cup will capture the imagination in the US, just because of the sheer scale of it. There’ll be a lot of interest. One of the things the ’94 tournament did was give the sport real legitimacy.”

Marketing analysts say sponsors and commercial partners look for two main things in identifying athletes they want to link up with. The first is the desirability of the athlete — the talent that makes a Lionel Messi or a Cristiano Ronaldo exceptionally popular. The second is lifestyle appeal — an aspect of a player’s personality or character which makes them interesting or different. David Beckham had both: an elite figure who presented a metrosexual image at a time when the sport was overtly masculine. One commercial expert who spoke to The Athletic but asked not to be named for reasons of confidentiality said Beckham became “transcendent, not just because he was a fabulous footballer but because he wasn’t afraid to challenge masculine tropes and what he did came across as genuine”.

Pulisic ticks one of those two boxes — a very gifted player but something of an introvert when it comes to publicity. Adams, to this point, has also let his football do most of the talking for him. He has adapted quickly to England’s Premier League this season but the World Cup just gone was arguably the first point in his career where his ability began to make waves beyond the circles of people who already knew about him.

Some nations, Setlur points out, are swayed into choosing a captain for commercial reasons. Adams, in contrast, was picked by the USMNT solely on the basis of football. But he is an interesting character — an educated talker and a player of colour who dealt well with a tense press conference before the USA’s 1-0 win over Iran on November 29. He was challenged by Iranian journalists over his pronunciation of ‘Iran’ and the US’s historical record on the treatment of ethnic minorities. His controlled responses impressed many, not least officials at 49ers Enterprises, Leeds’ minority shareholder.

“His responses were intelligent, empathetic and humble,” Bennett says. “I said at the time that I can’t think of a single political leader who could have handled that moment with such unflappable calm. In moments of light or darkness through qualifying, it was Tyler who was always willing to walk out and meet reporters and talk on the team’s behalf about issues both magical or challenging. In that moment (the Iran press conference), Americans fell in love with him.”

There are several ways in which Adams’ status as USMNT skipper could expand Leeds’ own reach in the States. The first is the presence of the 49ers in the boardroom at Elland Road allowing for serious cross-promotion between Leeds and the NFL franchise, with Adams featuring heavily. The second is his rise as a top-level footballer opening doors to more commercial offers and, as a result, broadening his exposure. He can shape his own image via social media and personal endorsements and the US Soccer Federation, having previously outsourced its commercial operations to Soccer United Marketing, is bringing it back in house at the end of this year, with plans for major sponsorship initiatives in the run-up to 2026. Adams, as captain, is highly likely to figure in them.

“How much he helps to expand Leeds’ image really depends on how much they and others leverage him in the US market,” Setlur says. “Given the relationship with the 49ers, it makes sense to use him in cross-promotional work unless there’s someone at Leeds the 49ers think would gain more global attention. The coverage of the Premier League in the US is crucial, too, because that’s how most people gain sight of Adams. He’s not in MLS and not as visible as he would be if he was. How much Leeds are on television dictates how much Adams lives in obscurity. If they aren’t shown much, it reduces his profile and his marketability, too. But at the same time, the USMNT activating Adams in their commercial partnerships would build his profile and indirectly build Leeds’ profile.

“There are a few questions that need answers. How much will he market himself and how much will he build his own brand? It’s necessary to increase exposure but not all players like doing that and you get some captains who prefer to be silent in a commercial sense. When it comes to marketing athletes, there’s almost a formula — personality plus performance. Getting Adams more front and centre would be good for Leeds, but it doesn’t just happen. You have to work for it and it has to be a 360-degree collaborative effort.

“But there’s an added aspect to Adams in that him being a black footballer would appeal to the African-American audience, which is around 40million people in the US. It helps to identify with him if that audience aren’t already big soccer fans. I could see the networks leveraging him on that basis. In North America, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is a big thing. He would definitely align with that momentum.”

Leeds did not highlight Adams excessively during the Qatar World Cup or even retweet the video of him and Biden. That might reflect the fact that at this particular point, the club are low down the Premier League after a fraught first half of the season and are trying hard to focus their attention on the job in hand. But Adams is already widely respected at Elland Road — an infectious personality — and his performances in Qatar on and off the pitch did not go unnoticed. There are some who see him as Leeds’ captain in waiting, whenever the baton passes from long-time skipper Liam Cooper.

“I first met him when he was 16,” Bennett says. “He walked into my studio and told me that one day he would lead the United States out to the World Cup. He’s made good on that dream because he’s a kid who takes the act of leadership incredibly seriously.

“The World Cup’s poised to return (to North America) and brands are flooding into the market to attach themselves to football in general and the United States men’s players in particular. It feels like an avalanche of commercial support is surging behind the sport and I think Tyler Adams will be first on every brand’s list: captain. To me, Leeds have the jewel of commercial opportunity in the United States right now.”

Television figures in the States during the World Cup were encouraging. The USA’s 0-0 draw with England drew in 21 million viewers, the sixth-highest total for a football game there. Many of the major World Cup sponsors are US brands, all of whom are expected to throw the kitchen sink at 2026 financially. Leeds, according to the expert who asked not to be named, have advantages in America beyond the presence of someone like Adams in their squad. The history of the club has the potential to be an added draw when it comes to sucking in more US fans.

“Leeds have got heritage and a good backstory, and that makes a difference,” the expert said. “You’ve got Don Revie and the 1970s and the feistiness of Leeds’ reputation. It means that anyone who gets interested in the club on a basic level will get more and more intrigued once they start looking into the story of what the club are actually about. We saw that with Liverpool in the States. Their fanbase exploded because they had the perfect mix of performance, star players and heritage.”

There are, of course, caveats in any analysis of what Adams as USMNT captain might do for Leeds’ profile. The World Cup is more than three years away and there is no cast-iron guarantee that Adams will hold the armband when it comes around. There is no guarantee that he will still be a Leeds player either, although his contract with them runs to 2026. Football is unpredictable and Adams does not represent an inevitable golden goose. But played right, and for a club with designs on a larger chunk of the US market, the goal is wide open.