Two Actors Paid $2.5 Million For A Fifth-Tier English Football Club

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Hey Friends,

In the fall of 2020, Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) and Rob McElhenney (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) purchased Wrexham Association Football Club (AFC), a Welsh football club that plays in the fifth (and lowest) tier of UK football, for $2.5 million.

The club was founded in 1867, making it the oldest Welsh football club and the third-oldest football club in the world. And they purchased the club directly from Wrexham fans, which publicly owned the team but were having serious financial trouble.

“I remember seeing [my wife] Blake [Lively], saying, "I have bad news, and I have really bad news. I slipped into someone's DMs again. The really bad news is that I might have bought half of a fifth-tier national football league in Wales,” Ryan Reynolds said on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last year.

So why did two North American actors buy a fifth-tier English football club? Well, it wasn’t about the typical dream of Premier League promotion and the hundreds of millions of dollars that follow. Instead, this was just a marketing and media play.

For example, their pitch to supporters involved a $2.6 million investment in the club’s players and facilities, and they agreed to sign a 25-year stadium lease for $150,000 annually (keeping the team in Wrexham long-term). But the meat of their offer centered around a “Netflix-style” documentary series that tracked their purchase, investment in the club, and the team’s journey back to prominence.

But here’s the best part: The docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham” officially premiered this past August on FX, and now that we are two years removed from the club’s acquisition, we now have quantitative data to contextualize the project’s success.

(Photo: Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds via Wrexham AFC)

Take the docuseries, for example. It follows McElhenney and Reynolds’ trials and tribulations of football club ownership, as well as the stories of Wrexham players, fans, and the town itself — a post-industrial, blue-collar town that has severely felt the impact of factory jobs exiting the UK. And people seem to like it.

The docuseries has received a 90% “Certified Fresh” score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, a 97% audience score, and has already been green-lit by producers for a second season. But more importantly, this has begun to translate to commercial and on-field success for Wrexham AFC players and supporters.

Here are a couple of highlights:

• On The Pitch

  • The club’s roster was overhauled entirely, and they brought in Phil Parkinson, a manager with nearly 20 years of coaching experience known for turning around losing clubs.

  • Wrexham AFC currently sits in second place in the National League standings, just one point behind Notts County and in line for promotion.

• Off The Pitch

  • Wrexham AFC has secured kit sponsorships from TikTok, Expedia, Vistaprint, and Macron Sports and training wear sponsorship with Reynold’s Aviation American Gin.

  • Wrexham AFC has sold 6,820 season tickets this year, a 161% increase from the 2,609 they sold in 2019 before Reynolds and McElhenney’s arrival.

Furthermore, Wrexham AFC has also seen its social audience expand.

• Twitter: 45,000 to 209,000 followers (+364% increase) 

• Instagram: 27,000 to 208,000 followers (+670% increase) 

• TikTok: 0 to 459,000 (club didn’t have an account until its sponsorship agreement with TikTok)

So it’s safe to say the project is working because even ESPN is taking notice.

For example, Wrexham’s FA Cup qualifier versus the Blyth Spartans this Saturday will air on ESPN2 and ESPN+. This will be a massive moment of exposure for the club, as ESPN2 is carried in 76 million households, and ESPN+ has 22.8 million subscribers.

And according to World Soccer Talk, the match time was moved to better accommodate more American viewers — and it seems to be a calculated decision by ESPN to air the match on ESPN2 since most of the matches air exclusively on ESPN+.  

Of course, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds have ties to Disney through “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Deadpool,” and the network has also owned FX and FXX for several years, so this makes a lot of sense.

But the bottom line is clear: Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds have brought a fifth-tier English football club global fame through media genius, and ESPN is using their platform and scale to drive significant attention to their other products.

Now that’s a win-win for everyone.

Have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.

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