Pitch Emails: Let’s Enjoy Wrexham While It’s Still Fun
Charming rich guys eventually just become rich guys, and success becomes harder to buy
Whenever I get new followers on social media or on here after writing something about music for a publication, I like posting the “Open wide for some soccer!” clip from the Simpsons, warning people that most of my random posts will be nonsequiturs about whatever soccer game I’m currently watching at 9 am.
With that, I’m introducing a new post style here, where I write about soccer things. I’m calling it Pitch Emails. Get it?
They finally did it. The franchise America has been pulling for has reached the heights that it was always capable of, and the nation rejoices as one.
Wrexham AFC has been promoted to League One.
My soccer fandom story isn’t unique, despite the fact that Esquire let me write about it. I always liked soccer, but didn’t have a team that was “mine,” so I watched some games, and weighed some variables to decide which one I would pick. There was an American factor in choosing Tottenham – they were the team that had one-time USA coach Jurgen Klinsmann, as well as rap star Clint Dempsey, and shortly after I signed up they got MLS product DeAndre Yedlin. More it was that I felt kinship as a Philly sports fan with the perpetual almost-ran team everyone loved to clown.
The American tie is why a lot of people pick their European soccer team. That and on-field success, which is pretty much entirely a result of how much money is pumped in by the team’s ownership.
Wrexham A.F.C. found itself square in the middle of this Venn diagram: The club, an old, storied club in an unknown-to-us Welsh town that hasn’t been anywhere near the international spotlight in a generation, got bought by a money partnership of Ryan Reynolds1 and Rob McElhenney, no doubt a result of some shrewed financial manager telling them to invest in soccer and finding something that was more affordable than the ones reserved for oil states and oligarchs (and hilariously inept baseball guys). Look up a few rich guys you know, especially retired athletes anymore, and see how many are partial owners in a soccer team. It’s a lot!
Of course, two guys whose lives have largely been on camera parlayed the whole thing into a documentary series about the rainy Welsh town that happened to have the third-oldest professional football team with the oldest international football stadium, and how two guys with no connection to the town, team or even sport had this big dream to take the club to the level it hadn’t been on in decades.
To put it in American terms for non-soccer viewers, imagine Wrexham had been playing in low-A minor league baseball, or even those summer leagues for college players. With a few promotions, they’ve found themselves now playing AA baseball – the same as the Harrisburg Senators, for my hometown readers. And they have the potential to keep winning their way up to the Majors.
With TV exposure and more camera-ready owners came better sponsorships. The jerseys had TikTok on the front instead of whatever tractor supply company was first. Then came United Airlines, a gin company in which Reynolds has a stake, and now a new one with Gatorade.
The thing with soccer is that it’s not a fair playing field (or pitch). In America, we’re used to salary caps and luxury taxes and all of these things that ostensibly keep the game fair and prevent super teams dominating the league year after year (to mixed results). In soccer, there are financial guardrails, but ask anyone who has paid attention to the likes of Manchester City or PSG about how that’s going.
Right now, teams can only spend what they organically earn through gameday ticket sales, concession, merchandise, and sponsors. (That’s all subject to change because soccer is corrupt and might let the big boys just pay an American-style luxury tax for overspending, while punishing the smaller teams for having the audacity to be less wealthy.)
You can simply buy success, as long as it’s even minimally laundered through partnerships, like, say, buying a team and making its primary sponsor a sports and entertainment group that happens to be owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, and you have to ask your very English fans to stop wearing traditional Arab attire to the games.
With the money comes better players and, therefore, on-field success. Even without the promise of trophies, money can attract people to live in unappealing places, like Wales, Newcastle, Oklahoma City, etc.
And now, just four years into the Ryan-Rob ownership experience, the team is in League One, just two levels below the Premier League, for the first time since the 1970s.
It’s a fun ride, especially for those of us in North America who are more than familiar with the two owners. And those who watched the documentary now have a connection to the players, their families, the characters in Wrexham who have been suffering for generations with the club, and the comedian-turned-executive-director living out his Football Manager or FIFA fantasies to unbelievable success.
The thing with fun rides, though, is that they ultimately end. And if the don’t, well, it stops being as fun as it did at the beginning. It’s easy to root for all involved, for now.
Because this whole thing could go in a few different ways.
The first is they keep winning. They keep winning because the money comes in with each promotion, and they buy better players who see the project (and money) as appealing, and they continue to climb the ladder, maybe winning promotion after a few seasons to the Championship (the weirdly-named level below the Premier League). Or, if we’re dreaming really big like they seem to be, they get to the Premier League.
Now America has a team in the Premier League more than it ever has, because we’ve been tuning in on Hulu to watch the rise, and we recognize the owners from our favorite TV shows and movies. As someone living in McElhenney’s hometown of Philadelphia, I can tell you I’ve seen numerous Wrexham shirts out and about. The city would 100% adopt them as their satellite team should they keep winning to the point where you can easily watch them on TV.
To get to that level of success, though, you have to be a ghoulish sports owner by and large. American involvement in the Premier League isn’t new – see Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Arsenal. It’s just that they’re owned by ultra-rich people without any of the charm or muscle definition of McElhenney and Reynolds.
A universally beloved owner is extraordinarily rare. As rare as an ethical billionaire. To get to this level of financial success often comes with making a few moral sacrifices, and for that, it’d be a lot less fun to root for the team anymore. Or, at least, it’d be hard to keep believing in them as scrappy underdogs.
And even the most handsome, charming, witty, seemingly down-to-earth rich guys can become standard issue mega-yacht-tax-exile rich guys with enough money.
Fans turn on their owners quickly. When things aren’t going according to usually-unattainable plans, you’ll see regular posts online about “[Owner] Out,” or hear chants around the ground calling for his/her dismissal, or see a group of soggy fans outside of the stadium kicking up a fuss about how they want new owners because they haven’t won the league by February.
After years without promotion, Wrexham just got two back-to-back promotions. Now, as you get lower in the English football pyramid, you get to teams where the joke is that the players are also construction workers during the week. Whether Wrexham can continue to compete as it gets higher will remain to be seen. Let’s say they don’t, though.
As the team grows with success, each promotion bringing in more money, maybe even outgrowing its historic stadium and renovating a little, the more fans – especially those outside of Wrexham – start getting bored with 8th place in the Championship. Safe from relegation, but not pushing for promotion. Honestly, mediocrity in the second-tier is arguably a best-case scenario for this club.
But hell, maybe they even make it to the Premier League, but get humiliatingly relegated after a record-low points season.
The point here is: How long does the good will get them?
The English Football League is so competitive that it’s entirely likely that Wrexham’s meteoric rise ends. And, as expectations change after fans got a taste of immediate growth, that might not be enough at a certain point.
It would (will) be a lot less fun to watch the documentary when Reynolds and McElhenney aren’t greeted at the stadium with songs and cheers and photo ops with literal royalty, but instead hiding in their owners’ box facing middle fingers and “fuck off”s.
The third scenario is that when the success comes, they won’t even be there.
In addition to his gin company, Reynolds is an owner of Mint Mobile, which you know if you listen to the commercials of podcasts. McElhenney and his “Sunny” co-stars also own a whiskey brand. These are guys looking to turn their existing money into more money in the future because, like a professional athlete’s career, showbiz opportunities dry out as your looks diminish.
Wrexham is, at its core, an investment. The two guys have done a great job promoting themselves as devoted fans, but they said themselves they knew nothing about the sport when they bought in. I know from experience how you can get wholly wrapped up and fall in love with soccer, but emotional investment and financial investment are two different things.
It’s entirely possible that at some point in the future, Reynolds and McElhenney cash out and sell the club, and the perception of two guys who grew this bond and connection to a club goes away. The old footage of McElhenney wearing a Wrexham cap around Philly puts a bad taste in your mouth because you knew it was just marketing.
As a soccer fan in Philly who loves “Always Sunny” and likes the occasional Ryan Reynolds movie and thinks he seems like a fine enough guy, I want Wrexham to do well. I’ve been keeping tabs on them since they got promoted for the first time. But I’m also looking at it cautiously, because I feel like I’ve watched enough soccer now to know how it ends for the club and the owners.
We all love a Cinderella story. But, after the Cinderella story ends, there’s the part where they all live happily ever after, and at that point, Cinderella is now a wealthy princess. And do we root for them anymore at that point?
What’s the fun in that?
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is The Lemon Twigs.
Yes, I know Ryan Reynolds is Canadian. But he’s still playing for an American audience, so my point is still valid.
Watching "Sunderland til I Die" was, I believe, the inspiration for Rob to consider buying a franchise. I'm happy for Wrexham and happy that this attention has help broaden the appeal for soccer in the U.S. They will hold on to the team until the financial incentives level off. All of that being said, every time billionaires buy teams here or abroad, my heart sinks a little bit knowing that prices will get jacked up and attending games/matches will become more difficult for regular people to see in person.