All too often these days the acquisition of football clubs is mired in controversy – the sale of Newcastle United to its new Saudi owners is a prime example. So it’s refreshing when there’s a takeover story that has all the hallmarks, and the happy ending, of a Hollywood romcom.
That’s exactly what has happened down at Wrexham AFC. The third-oldest club in the football league was languishing in the fifth division until the angels arrived in the form of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney who decided that they could easily afford $2 million to rescue the ailing club.
That was back in 2021. Now, three short years later, Wrexham seem to be on a meteoric rise through the league. Of course, much of this has been to do with the exploits on the pitch. But the marketing effort behind the team is also what has put them in this position.
The story begins
It’s not a new phenomenon for celebrities to be part-owners in sports teams, but it has been a largely US one.
But, inspired by the examples of basketball, baseball and football teams in the major leagues, Reynolds and McElhenney decided to focus on soccer. It may also have been their nation’s increasing interest in sports betting, including NFL points spread that also influenced their decision to invest. After all, when teams attract such a fervent following that people want to bet on their performance, it seems like the ideal investment opportunity.
So all it took was for the Wrexham Supporters trust to approve the takeover and the new owners were in business.
Welcome to Wrexham
As you’d expect, the pair are very media savvy and also know about the power of storytelling. In the tale of two Americans taking charge of a quintessentially British sports team, with no previous experience, here was the story.
In fiction, this is close to the huge Apple TV series Ted Lasso in which an NFL coach is hired to save (or, thanks to its scheming owner, ruin) a struggling soccer team in England. Anyone who’s seen it will know that it ends up being a heart-warming tale of success.
So the series Welcome To Wrexham was commissioned by FX and Disney+. The fly-on-the wall documentary charted the progress of the club after the takeover and found an immediate audience. To date, it has already generated an estimated $3.2 million in extra revenue for the club, the sort of sum that any other club would do almost anything to obtain.
Of course, having the added element of two genuine A-listers in the programme raised it high above the level of many other docs of its kind. But if there’s star appeal available, it makes sense to leverage it to the max.
Getting social
No marketing strategy today would be complete with out a strong element of social media. In fact, many strategies rely on it almost 100%.
Having two big names attached to the club served the purpose of effortlessly multiplying the number of followers of the club across various platforms.
For example, 45,000 followers on X (or Twitter at the time) became 209,000. Instagram saw an increase of 670% while TikTok soared from zero to 459,000 followers and has had over 4.4 million views of its videos.
These are the sorts of numbers that even teams in the top flight of the Football League struggle to achieve, all from a little club just inside the Welsh border.
A star signing
All the extra revenue raised by the marketing activity meant that Reynolds and McElhenney were in a position to bolster the squad.
Their key signing was an inspired choice on a couple of levels. Goalkeeper Ben Foster had played for England a couple of times as well as for Manchester United. He had also retired from the game in 2022 at the age of 39. But he was persuaded to accept a short-term contract to come in as replacement for the injured Rob Lainton.
Aside from his keeping skills, Foster is also a very active podcaster with a You Tube channel called The Cycling GK – so that brought in many more followers on social media too.
So what can other clubs learn?
It could be easy to dismiss the Wrexham success story. Yes, two celebrity owners taking over, climbing up two leagues in two seasons, and attracting major sponsors is an exceptional achievement, but there are lessons to be learnt.
The main one has to be to harness the incredible power of social media. This is best done through storytelling – and every club has some kind of tale to tell.
So it’s simply a question of finding the right narrative and, if possible, getting a couple of Hollywood legends to bankroll the whole thing too!
