Letter from Leeds: How a Video Game Produced Meaningful Tourism

Several years back, my son opted to purchase EA’s FIFA video game. The decision intrigued me because he wasn’t much of a soccer fan at that point. But he thought the game looked cool and you could play as just about any team in the world — in their virtual home stadium no less.

I got into it as well, often playing on the same team with him until my apparently aggressive style caused too many star players to earn too many red cards too early in the match, which caused too much concern for my son to let me join his teams any more. He continued on, though, and got quite good at it. He also got quite good at identifying real teams, especially in the English Premier League and its lower divisions where teams fight to earn a right to compete in the top tier.

And he got to know players, too. One of his early favorites became Giorginio Rutter, whom he discovered played for Leeds United. Neither of us knew much about Leeds United, although I had vaguely heard the name in the past when people talked about soccer in England. But for my son, Leeds quickly became his team, in the video game world and, interestingly, in the real world as well.

Before we knew it, we were waking up early to watch Leeds play on the weekend, buying the ability to watch the competition off the team’s app and onto our television in Colorado. Even though Leeds had been relegated in recent years to the EFL Championship — one tier below the Premier League — my son was loyal. And when they came within a goal of moving up to the Premier League at the end of the last season, he took it in stride.

For a while, that was the extent of the fandom. But when he and my wife joined me in London a few weeks ago while I oversaw our TEAMS Europe conference, we decided to stay one extra day as a family to explore parts of London we hadn’t seen before. But my wife quickly came to the fantastic conclusion that it might be fun instead to take an adventure to wherever in the world Leeds was.

“Leeds? For the Day?”

It turns out Leeds is about two hours north of London by train. Once we began considering the idea, I asked a British friend here in the United States what he knew about the place. “Leeds?” he said. It’s fine, but it would be like someone overseas choosing to visit a mid-sized U.S. city that might not have the international profile of more popular destinations. That assessment only intrigued us more.

During TEAMS Europe, I inquired with some of our British attendees to learn more. The general reaction was similar to the first one we got. “Leeds? For the day?” Yes, Leeds, for the day. Outside of Elland Road — the home stadium for Leeds United and site of a merchandise superstore — what could we do in the city for an afternoon? A few Leeds natives in attendance gave us some great suggestions.

That’s how we found ourselves the other week boarding a train at London’s King’s Cross Station, Platform 6  — just 3 ¾ platforms away from Harry Potter’s famous embarkation point. (Which you can also visit at the station…)

Getting off the train in downtown Leeds, we booked an Uber that took less than 30 seconds to arrive. Off to Elland Road, please.

“Is there some sort of event happening there today?” our driver asked as we began the 15-minute drive out of town. “I usually get an alert when there’s something going on. There’s nothing going on today.”

“No, we just want to see the stadium.”

“You came all the way here just to do that? From America? … There’s no game today.”

Well, when you put it that way, I suppose that’s what we had done.

Despite our driver’s misgivings, he did indeed drop us off. The superstore met our expectations, with tons of merch that my son went to town on with money he had earned last winter shoveling snow for our neighbors: a hat, a sweatshirt, a scarf, a customized pin with his name and Rutter, a pair of socks and an amazing retro jersey of the 1992 squad. We took photos outside, looked at statues of players we mostly still don’t know much about, and marveled that we were standing at the place that from the outside at least, looked just like it does on the FIFA video game that had brought us there in the first place. We couldn’t talk our way into the stadium, which was undergoing some sort of internal project, but we got close enough.

And we had more to see.

A Corn Palace, Jerk Chicken and a Black Knight

From there, we went back to town to see the fabulous Corn Exchange building, constructed in the 1860s as a marketplace to trade corn kernels. Its innovative opening on the north side of the roof allowed natural sunlight in which to inspect the material. Today, the venue is filled with adorable stalls for merchants and coffee shops. It looked like the set of a period movie. We found some biscuits and jams for my brother, who we would see for his birthday after the trip.

We walked around the whole place, and then crossed the street to the Kirkgate Market, which was filled with interesting food stalls with just about every ethnic cuisine you could imagine. My son had his first taste of jerk chicken and it was a great rest stop before heading to Leeds City Square.

There, we marveled at the statue of the Black Prince. A QR code on the statue base allowed us to hear the explanation of how he was the military legend Edward of Woodstock from the 1300s, the eldest son and heir apparent of King Edward III. The Black Prince died before his father, allowing his son, Richard II, to ascend to the throne.

Next up was a 20-minute walk to the Royal Armories Museum, which like so many museums throughout England was free. There, we spent a few hours looking at armor through the years, saw a hands-on display of the substantial and decidedly less-substantial machine guns used during D-Day, marveled at the fantastic five-story Hall of Steel decorated with swords and other weapons, and shot cross bows for scores. (Turns out I’m not a bad shot…)

From there, we walked back to the train station to catch the train back to London, more than satisfied with a day of touring a city that like so many others in the world was full of surprises.

A Final Conversation

One coda on our trip. On the ride back to London, we sat in a four-seat portion of the train and were joined by a woman whom we didn’t start talking to until halfway through the two-hour journey. Realizing we were American, she asked what we were doing in Leeds. We explained the purpose of the trip only to get the now standard response: “You came all the way up here? Just to go to Leeds?”

But she was taken in by our sense of adventure. She had just come from visiting her aging parents “in the north” and it turns out she’s in the same industry of senior care that my wife is in back home. They had a terrific talk about how those industries work in each country, realizing that most people in different countries have more in common than they think. We told her about other things we had seen in Leeds (she had yet to be to the Armories Museum) and she was surprised by what we had to report and the photos we shared with her of the places we’d seen.

As the train rolled through the pretty English countryside, we talked about other things my wife and son had seen in London over the previous week, our interest in Tommy Steele, an original British rock-and-roll star whom she knew because her father had been in a band in the same era (a topic for a different column!), and where we were off to next when we returned to the United States.

And it’s of particular note that our entire travel experience began from a video game. It’s the kind of thing we talk about a lot at our EsportsTravel Summit — the power of video games and esports to draw visitation, sometimes in unexpected ways. I am positive we are not the only family that has found the benefit of tourism from this emerging industry.

But our train ride back to London — and the day overall — was everything travel is supposed to be: exploring new areas, meeting new people, trying new things, making new memories. Our day there will be a lasting memory.

Jason Gewirtz is vice president of the Northstar Meetings Group Sports Division and executive editor and publisher of SportsTravel.