First SKIMS, now Adidas: Jude Bellingham is on the path to eclipsing David Beckham

Jude Bellingham is launched upon Euro 2024 by Adidas and on this occasion the great English prodigy is not sharing headline billing with anyone – this one is all about him.

The 20-year-old is not just expected to be the star of the first great one-country European Championship since 2016, he is also a commercial phenomenon in the making. First off, his boot and sportswear sponsor Adidas, which is Real Madrid kit supplier, has made Bellingham its Euros flagship player, and its new video across all platforms was launched at 9am on Thursday.

As Telegraph Sport revealed last month, the German giant’s marketing budget has stretched to licensing the great Beatles track Hey Jude. Featuring Adidas luminaries David Beckham, Ian Wright, Frank Lampard and musician Stormzy, as well as broadcaster Laura Woods – the spot looks back over England disappointments and forward to this summer with hope. Even those big names are just part of the supporting cast around the young man who might yet change England’s story.

The partnership with Adidas may, if Bellingham can build a career and a brand, last a lifetime. It has for Beckham. This is the league in which Bellingham is playing now and the launch of his first major campaign outside Adidas – for the underwear range SKIMS, founded by Kim Kardashian – showed the power that he wields.

The simple pictures – Bellingham bare-chested, a pair of white boxers, and an unbranded Telstar-style football – made newspaper digital editions, front and back pages and multiplied all over social media. There are not many who can convert a marketing budget into that kind of coverage. The question is how he, and those managing him – chiefly, it seems, his parents, Mark and Denise – choose to balance the clamour from brands with the demands of playing football at the elite end.

It was clear even at the World Cup 18 months ago that Bellingham was to be an eminently bankable star. Then a teenager, his steep rise from child prodigy to fully-fledged England international meant his image was in prime position by the entrance to the Adidas concession in the vast Doha Fifa fan park. Since then, his stellar first season at Real and his growing confidence in television interviews, in English and Spanish, have made him a compelling figure for those trying to reach a lucrative but fickle market.

Bellingham’s generation are bombarded from new media in a way that Beckham’s simply were not, and marketeers know from research that they have just a couple of seconds – if that – to gain their young audience’s attention or be scrolled past.

Since Beckham, there has not been another marketable English icon in a space that has been dominated by Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Beckham’s successors as stars – and captains -– of the England team, Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane, were a less obvious fit for the global stardom that Beckham had carved out for himself in the 1990s and 2000s.

The comparisons between Bellingham and Beckham are obvious. Both Adidas and Real, both with England at the centre of their careers, both with good looks and relatable backgrounds. Beckham, a shrewd hustler for his own brand, imitated Bellingham’s goal celebration on Instagram this month. He had a similar one himself in his heyday. Beckham has learned to maximise his brand, which is why Adidas still pay for the privilege 11 years after he last walked off the pitch as a professional.

Beckham’s job now is essentially the renting out of his name around the world – whether it be for luxury suits, luxury watches, luxury headphones, or non-luxury crisps, he is a surefire bet. The 88 million followers on Instagram can be marketed directly – although that comes at a premium. He has his own production company Studio 99, which makes documentaries chronicling Beckham’s life, and also the commercials in which he features.

He prefers it that way. As a man who spends a large amount of his time making commercials, he grew tired of working with directors he did not know and ideas he had not approved. It means that endorsees can get the whole package – talent, creative, production – in one stop. For Beckham it means control.

Although it took Beckham, 49, and his closest aides many years to hone the art of selling the Beckham brand. He promotes a cuddly image but can be ruthlessly pragmatic when he wishes to be – as with his unpopular Qatar endorsement. As a player, he was unapologetically commercial from the moment his fame took off. He relaunched Brylcreem in 1998 and along the way has shilled for Pepsi, Vodafone, Sainsbury’s and H&M. But when he left Manchester United for Real in 2003, it all got somewhat out of hand.

That summer, when he joined the club’s groundbreaking pre-season tour to China and Japan, he first embarked on a personal tour with wife Victoria in which the couple fronted all kinds of advertising campaigns in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. Many of which they likely would not consider now.

That is the question for Bellingham and his advisers – how do they navigate this? The challenge is knowing what to turn down, and there will be a lot. Cristiano Ronaldo, for instance, prefers to take another view. There seems to be very little that the player will not endorse. His 622 million Instagram followers may be the most awesome marketing tool in world sport and he is not afraid to weaponise them. Ronaldo will advertise just about anything if the price is right.

Even just a quick scroll reveals food supplements, cryptocurrency, fitness devices, Xbox, alkaline-rich mineral water, and Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the 2030 World Cup finals – which surely needs no help at all. Ronaldo has gone for high volume and relatively short partnerships. Messi has hit fewer brands but bigger names. As well as his lifetime partnership with Adidas, there is Mastercard, Hard Rock Café and his new sports drink Más+.

The SKIMS partnership was a toe in the water for Bellingham. He went for a non-established brand, and a campaign that was simple rather than sophisticated. Every choice had to be weighed for its downside. Nonetheless, as Beckham has shown, the most famous footballers’ brands are extremely durable. They endure through mishaps and scandals like few others. Not least because they are constantly renewed and reinforced weekly with the drama of what happens on the pitch.

At Niketown on Oxford Circus in London, the British flagship store for the most powerful sporting brand in the world, it is notable that the big window wraps advertising England’s Euros kit feature Phil Foden and John Stones. Bellingham would have been the first choice but strict rules govern these launches when the player in question is not an endorsee of the kit supplier. Bellingham did not feature in the England kit reveal video. For the first time since Beckham, Nike does not have England’s biggest name.

Ronaldo, Messi, Beckham – each are themselves corporations, around which commercial teams of lawyers, marketeers, creatives and PRs work with brands and partnerships. Each deal has to be carefully considered, then negotiated and delivered. That is the challenge that faces Bellingham – as well as staying at the top of world football. Both are likely to make him a very wealthy man.