This is a Hulu series/documentary covering the purchase of the Welsh football club Wrexham FC by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney
Some background, Wrexham is a Welsh football club in the fourth tier of English football, the National League. This is the lowest division possible to still be considered ‘professional’. Now, I’m still not quite sure how Rob and Ryan became enamored with the idea of owning this club. All I know is they chose one with a passionate fanbase and a decent enough squad to make it conceivable to get promoted.
I know they did NOT come up with the idea because they were avid Football Manager players. Which is good.
Now I don’t know how many people here know much about English football or play Football Manager.
But, while because of covids impact on teams like Wrexhams finances, this is really win-win for Wrexham, there is a danger. And that danger is the situation being treated like its a game of Football Manager.
You’ve got obscene amounts of cash (Ryan moreso Im sure)…you buy expensive (relative to their position) players. You bring in expensive players on loan…this is all wage-wise by the way. Its the wages that will kill the team if it all goes tits up. And then for whatever reason Ryan and Rob pull the plug and sell the team. Suddenly you’ve got a team spending WAY more money then any team below them and some 35 places above them and no Hollywood sugar daddies to fund them.
The team would go into administration. Get points docked, get relegated, get relegated again and possibly even dissolved.
And even if none of that happens…Rob and Ryan are still going to be so tempted to flex their financial muscle and bring in some players. In fact let me just look at their real-life transfers. …ok i wont spoil anything but just quote Mr. Crab: “Moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney”
It does appear that Reynolds and McElhenney are far more involved thankfully. And care about the town. That hopefully may mitigate any ‘we’re bored, let’s sell and do something else’.
Wait, they actually bought the team? From the commercials that aired during the latest season of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, I thought it was going to be weird spinoff/clone of that. I was ready for some Nightman cameos and long digressions on Bird Law.
It also helps that Ryan Reynolds is not only worth 150 mill (if those wealth websites are to be believed) his future potential earnings are off the charts.
Reynolds has (or had) investments and ownership stakes in several companies over the past few years, including Mint Mobile (for which he also appears in their ads), Wealthsimple (a Canadian online investment company), and Aviation American Gin (since sold to Diageo).
Footy finances are always interesting to think about and Wrexham’s league has a requirement that its clubs live within their means.
Yet somehow rich owners find their way around those rules (looking at you, Manchester City).
By my estimates Wrexham should have annual revenues of $5 million or more and a player payroll around $1.2 million. I suspect there isn’t much discretion in how the rest is spent.
According to websites he sold aviation for 610 million 375M upfront and due to various things in the deal could still earn 200 million + over 10 years at the time of sale
A year ago I knew nothing about/cared nothing for English football (or soccer, for that matter), but I’m watching this show — after having watched the Amazon All or Nothing seasons for Manchester City, the New Zealand All Blacks, Tottenham Hotspur, and Arsenal.
(I think I’m turning into an English football supporter…I totally blame Ted Lasso for starting all of this!)
The four episodes that have aired so far were more compelling than I expected, and Ryan and Rob seem to be sincere in their interest. In the first episode they paid some lip service to “why Wrexham” but never actually answered the question — it reminds Rob of Philly? even though he’s never been to Wrexham? — and I’d love to see that addressed at some point.
Not that I’ve seen/noticed. The only numbers I’ve seen so far are that they spent £100,000 on a new pitch and then had to spend another £200,000 to fix/replace it. Which kind of makes me wonder about whoever advised them to spend the £100,000.
Funny, “treat” isn’t the word I would have used. I wound up fast-forwarding through almost all of it. IMHO, it felt like something that got slapped together in a hurry due to a regular-production issue.
Wrexham came up one goal short in the semifinals of the promotion tournament. I found the whole show addictive and watchable. I mostly enjoyed the little tangents, although maybe there was one too many such. But meeting the town and the players and the two new owners (who genuinely seem like nice guys) (although of course if they were nefarious they could presumably manipulate their own show to make the seem nice) was a lot of fun. What I thought was so interesting about watching the show was that it had so many of the familiar beats of narrative scripted drama/comedy that it really fit into that niche in the brain… particularly after watching Ted Lasso. But of course it wasn’t. So whenever a key football match would come up, I’d feel myself trying to outguess or outthink the writers… “obviously, the flow of the arc calls for them to win The Big Game… unless that’s what they WANT us to think”. When of course the matches were all just real sporting events. I also found it interesting that the very little we learn at the very end about the team that beat them made it sound like precisely the same narrative… struggling town that cares deeply about their football team. But their story was probably even MORE exciting, as they ended up 6th in the league and still managed to get promoted. Just a reminder that in real life, the “bad guys” aren’t sporting villains and bullies…
— and I’d love to see that addressed at some point.
I wound up fast-forwarding through almost all of it. IMHO, it felt like something that got slapped together in a hurry due to a regular-production issue.