Written by Harry Roberts
When we think of Hollywood stars spending their fortunes, our thoughts immediately turn to sports cars, sprawling mansions, and private jets. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, however, chose a far more unorthodox investment. In 2021, the pair chose to invest in a stagnating, debt-ridden, and largely forgotten football club from a small city in North Wales: Wrexham AFC. With their arrival came something rarely seen in the lower tiers of English football — Hollywood. Almost overnight, Wrexham became the setting for cameras, producers and global attention as the Disney+ documentary Welcome to Wrexham began telling the story of one of the most extraordinary transformations in modern football.
The reception was immense. My grandfather, an avid season-ticket holder at the club, spoke of the immediate impact on the city. The influx of tourists and investment flowed not only to the football club, but into the wider community. It was not long after the acquisition that actor Channing Tatum was spotted celebrating with both players and supporters in The Turf, Wrexham’s renowned and booming matchday pub. Soon after, Hugh Jackman followed suit, forever the ‘Greatest Showman’ in his enthusiastic support from the stands, all while striker Paul Mullin was making a cameo appearance in the 2024 Marvel film Deadpool & Wolverine alongside Reynolds himself.
On the pitch, the success has been equally remarkable. In 2025, Wrexham returned to the Championship, English football’s second division, for the first time in 43 years, becoming the first club in English Football League history to achieve three successive promotions. Additionally, investment in the women’s team has seen them competing in the top division of women’s football in Wales, the Adran Premier, while also reaching domestic cup finals and challenging for European qualification. Reynolds and McElhenney have also been at the forefront of the latest plans to build a 7,500-seat Kop stand, bringing the stadium’s capacity to around 18,000 — a clear sign of the club’s growing ambitions.
Meanwhile, the club’s global profile has exploded, with Instagram followers rising from around 41,000 before the takeover to more than 1.6 million today. Financially, the growth has been just as dramatic, with revenues increasing from around £1.5 million in 2021 to £27 million in recent accounts, highlighting the remarkable turnaround of the club in just five years. Wrexham has since become a worldwide talking point, frequently described as football’s newest “fairytale story”, with many hoping for a Hollywood-style ending: promotion to the Premier League. At present, the club sits sixth in the Championship, in the play-off places, leaving Hollywood’s Premier League dream within touching distance.
But does Wrexham really deserve the “fairytale” label, or is their rise simply the ‘unfair’ and inevitable result of the millions invested by Hollywood? To answer this, it is important to understand how difficult the club’s situation was before 2021. In 2004, Wrexham entered administration and received a 10-point deduction, narrowly avoiding collapse. By 2010, redevelopment plans under owners Geoff Moss and Neville Dickens threatened the future of the historic Racecourse Ground with proposals to replace parts of the stadium with a supermarket and flats. On the pitch, matters were no better: Wrexham dropped into the National League in 2008 and remained there for 15 years, repeatedly falling short of promotion. I even remember watching Wrexham at Wembley Stadium in the 2013 play-off final against Newport County, a rare opportunity to return to League Two. But, as so often during that period, the club came up short. Thus, for Hollywood to arrive, superhero-like, to rescue a historic club from decline most definitely resembles a modern football fairytale.
Many in Wrexham agree and believe that good fortune was long overdue. Yet the question remains: why would Hollywood choose Wrexham when there were countless other clubs to invest in? According to Reynolds and McElhenney in their Disney+ documentary, both had developed a fascination with English football and had long dreamed of owning a sports team and guiding it from underdog to success. More specifically, they were searching for a club with a “close-knit community, passionate fanbase, and deep history”. Wrexham ticked every one of those boxes.
Not everyone, however, believes in the Hollywood fairytale. Andy Holt, owner of Accrington Stanley FC, has criticised the influence of “Hollywood money” in the lower leagues, arguing that when a club spends “three or four times more on wages than its rivals”, success should be expected rather than celebrated as a miracle. Moreover, the growing involvement of private equity in football (with Wrexham themselves selling a minority stake to Apollo Global Management, alongside major clubs such as Atlético Madrid and AC Milan) has led some fans to fear that the sport is increasingly prioritising short-term financial returns, threatening long-term footballing success and the community-feel that clubs, like Wrexham, have established over the decades.
However, in Wrexham’s case, it is difficult to ignore the impact of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. In just a few years, they have helped transform Wrexham AFC from a struggling lower-league side into a club now knocking on the door of the Premier League, while continuing to embrace its deep roots within the local community. In that sense, Wrexham’s rise stands as one of the most remarkable stories in modern sport — a footballing fairytale.
