The lessons Marcus Smith can learn from a woman with 4m followers ...Middle East

Marcus Smith has been set a fascinating target: to outstrip the fame and following of Ilona Maher, whose status as a rugby player with a profile far beyond the game has made her name a benchmark of awareness.

“Rugby is traditionally a sport where nobody wants to put their head above the parapet,” says Paul Adesoye, agent to Smith, the incumbent England fly-half.

“Ilona Maher has been an amazing example of what celebrity and stardom can do for rugby, as the Bristol Bears have recently seen with the rising interest in their club. We’d hope for Marcus to also, in a few years, be at that level, maybe even further.”

Maher signed for Bristol Bears three weeks ago, for a three-month stint in the women’s Premiership as preparation for next year’s Women’s World Cup. The announcement video drew seven million views and 1.3m likes on TikTok.

When Smith’s extension of his club contract at Harlequins until 2028 was revealed a week later, it barely made the news. The terms had in fact been agreed in pre-season, and anyway staying with Harlequins was no surprise.

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There was interest from Bath and Racing 92, but Quins suit Smith’s style of play, and an RFU rule means he needs to be in England to play for the national team.

So what will it take for Smith to crack the Maher magic, and is it even a goal worth pursuing?

A comparison between the pair in rugby terms alone is clearly invidious. One has 39 caps for England and eight seasons in the Premiership and Champions Cup, broadcast mostly on subscription channels, behind him. The other has played in two Olympic Games sevens, and hardly played 15s.

But while Smith has 299,000 followers on Instagram, Maher has 15 times that number, with 4.7m.

Maher’s impactful messages on women’s body positivity made her popular well before last summer’s Paris Olympics when her USA team won bronze.

For all of Smith’s eye-catching style of play, and his distinctive haircut and celebratory fist-pump, his watchwords and that of his agent are “the main thing is the main thing, and rugby is the main thing”. His persona is as a settled fellow, finding comfort in religion and family life.

Money could be one route to greater publicity. But while Harlequins’ chief executive Laurie Dalrymple tells The i Paper “the contract extension is big news because he’s one of the best players on the planet”, he also says rugby is not ready for American-style disclosure of wages.

“The key thing is, he’s getting his market worth,” says Dalrymple, while Adesoye says: “It isn’t a fixed amount per year, but he’s happy with it.”

An educated guess would put Smith’s wage in the high hundreds of thousands, making the 25-year-old the club’s highest-earning employee. He is certainly Quins’ designated “marquee” player, whose pay is excluded from the salary cap.

He also has one of England’s enhanced EPS (Enhanced Elite Player Squad) contracts, reportedly worth £160,000 a year. But the length of that deal is another feature deemed too sensitive for rugby to talk about, although it is believed to run the maximum available three years, to encompass the 2027 World Cup.

Smith has sponsorship deals with Nike, Lucozade, Charles Tyrwhitt and Optimum Nutrition. He has expressed admiration for David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo branching out from football into fashion.

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Roc Nation, who also have England forwards Maro Itoje and Ellis Genge on their books, encourage their clients to think outside the box, describing them as CEOs of their own operations.

“All the add-ons, the commercial stuff, the social following, comes with success on the pitch, so that’s what we want Marcus to focus on,” says Adesoye.

“But we also want Marcus to be able to amplify his voice, amplify his opinion – whether it’s philanthropy, or just his hobbies, we want him to be out there a bit more.”

In this plan to expand, Smith was in the Philippines in August, coaching rugby and futsal with kids in Manila. The local press hailed him as “a half Pinoy-half Briton born in the Philippines to a well-off Filipina mother and an English banker-father”, although they needed to explain rugby in the most basic terms.

“He managed to meet with some of the high-ranking political officials,” says Adesoye, “and to meet with [boxer] Manny Pacquiao, and he managed to do some really good community work, which was amplified on Filipino TV. So his profile is growing.”

TV appearances have always been a measure of a sportsperson’s cut-through to the wider consciousness. Maher spent two months on “Dancing with the Stars” (America’s “Strictly Come Dancing”) up to November, finishing in second place.

Bill Beaumont and Gareth Edwards were captains on “A Question of Sport” back in the day, and Matt Dawson and Ugo Monye more recently. Austin Healey, Gavin Henson and Ben Cohen are among those to have competed on “Strictly”, while “Dancing on Ice” has featured Kyran Bracken, Gareth Thomas, Max Evans and Ben Foden.

Martin Bayfield as Hagrid’s body double in the Harry Potter films may have passed you by, but recently-retired prop Joe Marler has gained attention for his podcasts, as have Mike Tindall and James Haskell, with a dedicated audience at their theatre shows. They have also made it onto I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

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Steve Diamond, the long-serving Premiership coach, recently said rugby needs “more Danny Ciprianis on the front and back pages”. Tindall’s marriage to the Princess Royal’s daughter Zara Phillips took the former centre into that bracket.

But Cipriani’s bait to the paparazzi was his roller-coaster love life and escapades including a couple of arrests and being knocked down by a bus. Safe to say, Smith is not looking for that kind of publicity.

“After our game in Paris this month he was mobbed by French kids at the end, they made a bee-line for him,” says Dalrymple.

“In Bordeaux last season, he was inundated for selfies at the airport.”

On away trips or tours, though, you will often see Smith spending time quietly with his mum Suzanne, or one of his two brothers.

Smith does have box-office appeal. Dalrymple remembers how the interest leapt when he came back to Quins for a Twickenham match during last year’s Six Nations. This Saturday, they will have a sell-out 80,000-plus crowd for “Big Game 16”.

Dalrymple sums up the priorities and realities: “The best thing for Marcus, if you talk about commercialising his IP, is to be in England, where he’s got his audience.

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“His work ethic is incredible – he’s worked his arse off to get there – and he’s been at this club since he was 14, so it sends a really clear signal to other young aspiring players that you can go the distance at Quins.

“He’s just really polished; he’s well mannered, he’s articulate, he’s a really nice guy. And if you’re talking in commercial rhetoric, building a product around him and trying to take a club to where we think it can be, having IP and brand assets like Marcus is really important for us.

“Will there be a day he may want to experience another culture? If that day does come, he’ll have given over 10 really good years to this club. I’d love him to be a one-club man, and I can equally see that.”

Possibly the greatest boost in the rugby fame game is winning the World Cup, as Wilkinson proved in 2003.

“Next year, obviously, there is the British and Irish Lions tour in Australia, he [Smith] would definitely want to be a big part of that,” says Adesoye.

“And then the next big thing in ’27 is the Rugby World Cup. He did well in 2023 but he’d want to firmly establish that 10 shirt with England in ’27, and hopefully the team can come back with some success.”

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