Liga MX and MLS Win Together With Leagues Cup Soccer Campaign

Teams from Liga MX and Major League Soccer face each other in the Leagues Cup tournament to stoke rivalries and define American soccer—the North American game, specifically.

Mexico, the United States and Canada will welcome the FIFA World Cup in 2026, and their national teams just got a small regional preview of that event in the U.S.-hosted Copa América. While La Liga and MLS clubs were among those that faced off in the CONCACAF Champions Cup earlier this year—with La Liga’s Pachuca besting MLS’ Columbus Crew—Leagues Cup is the only tournament catered specifically to La Liga and MLS Clubs. Held four times since 2019, the event features 47 clubs playing 77 matches throughout the U.S. and Canada through August 25.

Oved Valadez is the co-founder and executive creative director of Portland, Oregon-based creative consultancy Industry, which was tasked with branding the Leagues Cup and giving it a visual identity. That’s difficult to do when broader U.S. audiences have a far different view of soccer than league and team fanbases. 

“When you think of the Americana of sports, like there’s these visions and behaviors that are stamped into the American mindset: The big barn with the basketball hoop and the kid shooting, the alleyway with the crate and basketball in Chicago, playing stickball in Brooklyn, playing football at nighttime in Texas in a big stadium,” Valadez said. “There’s these really beautiful symbols, but those don’t exist in soccer or people’s perception of soccer: It’s a suburban sport, you pay to play, orange slices.”

When planning the marketing for the Leagues Cup, Industry’s mission was to show U.S. fans that soccer is a much simpler, multigenerational, accessible game—not only globally but in many corners of the United States. Last year, that meant having LeBron James, Serena Williams and Kim Kardashian in seats by the sideline when Lionel Messi scored the game-winning goal in his debut for MLS’  Inter Miami against Liga MX’s Cruz Azul during the League Cup. Messi would score 10 goals throughout the tournament as Inter would secure MLS’ first Leagues Cup win.

This year, Industry took a multipronged approach with its marketing, starting with the anthem and music video, “Nuestros Colores,” produced by Grammy Award winner Emilio Estefan Jr. and featuring contributions from six-time Latin Grammy winner Christian Nodal, Black Eyed Peas member Taboo, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Emily Estefan, Latin Grammy nominee Gusi, Argentinian singer Abel Pintos and Rabanes’ frontman Emilio Regueira. Laden with lots of on-pitch action, the anthem video also lingers on fan jerseys, their team logos’ place in Leagues Cup jerseys and flags designed by Industry, their repurposing by fans like San Diego-based artist Georgina Treviño and their movement across generations.

In the follow-up ad, the one-minute manifesto “This is Rivalry. This is Leagues Cup,” Industry presents a family of Liga MX Monterrey fans dealing with a dissenter who’d rather follow the MLS’ Houston Dynamo. It picks up during an ill-tempered pickup game between a neighborhood’s L.A. Galaxy and Chivas fans and has Mexican goaltending legend Jorge Campos sporting a jersey featuring all sides of the Leagues Cup showdown.

The push has worked, as the tournament’s first weekend at the end of July averaged crowds of 21,415, up from 17,269 last year and including a record 50,765 at Levi’s Stadium on July 27 for the San Jose Earthquakes’ matchup with Chivas Guadalajara on Saturday. The tournament’s sponsor count is up from nine in 2023 to 15 this year, including AT&T, Coors, Geico, Frito Lay, Lowe’s, Gran Centenario and Caliente.

“Leagues Cup is a powerful testament to how we are uniting both leagues to grow soccer at the grassroots level,” said Marcela Garcia, marketing vp for Leagues Cup. “With our new campaign, ‘More Than Soccer, This Is Leagues Cup,’ we are embracing the cultural diversity of soccer in our region.”

Speaking to culture

Valadez noted that while all of the partners working on the Leagues Cup have a similar mission—starting North American soccer’s journey to the World Cup—its campaign expanded upon “More Than Soccer” by revisiting the concept of “ni de aquí, ni de allá,” meaning, “Not from here, not from there.”

Used to describe the angst of first- or second-generation immigrants who no don’t feel embraced by their new nation but no longer feel accepted by the country they left, Valadez considered “ni de aquí, ni de allá” a “very unique Latin American attitude.” Born in Mexico City, raised in Atotonilco el Alto in the highlands of Jalisco and moved to Chicago in the ‘90s, Valadez said the Leagues Cup provides an opportunity to give “ni de aquí, ni de allá” new meaning based on real insight Industry and MLS are receiving from soccer fans.

“It’s this newness that’s coming out of North America that I think ultimately will bring the excitement for 2026,” Valadez said. “We need to connect with the Latin American, where the power of tradition meets newness and innovation, and that’s very American in and of itself.”

Of the roughly 12.4 million viewers who watched the Copa América final between Argentina and Colombia, 6.35 million favored the Spanish-language broadcast on TelevisaUnivision platforms. That follows a 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar where an estimated 9 million viewers tuned in to the Spanish-language broadcasts on Telemundo and Peacock for the final between Argentina and France. 

Though 65% of non-Hispanic fans prefer to watch games in Spanish, marketing agency BODEN found closer ties to soccer within the U.S. Hispanic community. Not only do 73% of U.S. Latinos aged 16 and older identify as soccer fans, according to BODEN, but they often describe themselves as being “born into it.”

That’s an especially important distinction with the approaching North American World Cup. Among those fans, 64% view the World Cup as a holiday and rank it second only to Christmas in importance.

“The marketer looks at it and says, ‘With Leagues Cup, it helps me because it’s a unique summer window, but it’s every single year, and I can plan on having something that’s a tentpole on my marketing calendar every single summer across more than 30 markets in North America,’” said Carter Ladd, chief revenue officer of Major League Soccer and Soccer United Marketing. “And I know that I’m going to reach MLS fans. I know that I’m going to read acculturated and acculturated Hispanic soccer fans via Liga MX.’”

Leagues of lessons

Leagues Cup learned from last year’s installment as it attempted to connect with North American audiences. This time around, it incorporated listening to consumer research, brand briefings and creative reviews and even airing its anthem on Univision during the Supercopa de la Liga MX in June.

On July 4, the Leagues Cup aired the anthem during the El Tráfico MLS rivalry match between LA Galaxy and Los Angeles FC. Valadez credited Leagues Cup’s Garcia for the change, saying that she took a step back and considered the element that would make people aware of the tournament and distinguish it from other soccer events during the summer’s busy calendar that also included Copa América, the European Championship and the Olympics.

Garcia and Industry saw designer Martine Rose creating soccer jerseys and hip-hop’s embrace of the soccer kit and saw a way to colorfully represent fandoms and rivalries such as Tijuana and LAFC or superstar “Chicharito” Javier Hernández’s current and former teams Chivas and Galaxy.

They also saw, after the success of the 2023 tournament, a willingness by the top echelons of Liga MX and MLS to improve the tournament. Valadez said Liga MX president Mikel Arriola and head of operations Victor Guevara joined MLS commissioner Don Garber and his deputy Gary Stevenson in reviewing edits of the ads, while the teams provided an extraordinary amount of access.

“Everybody from [Inter Miami owner David] Beckham giving access to players and old footage to [Austin FC owner] Matthew McConaughey, who wanted to be in it but couldn’t, giving us footage of him being hands-on in the stadium,” Valadez said. “America gave us their real La Monumental ultras fans, Pumas gave us their mascot, their stadium, Jorge Campos—everyone committed, and that shows, to me, that there’s momentum to go somewhere.”