Wrexham AFC: Welcome To The EFL Championship
The past weekend in English football has been as exciting and historical as it can get. On one hand, Liverpool won their record-equalling 20th Premier League title in the debut season of their manager Arne Slot and on the other hand, we have Wrexham AFC, the Welsh club, creating history by becoming the first club in English football to win three back-to-back promotions.
We will discuss about Liverpool and their global status in a future post, but today’s blog is dedicated to Wrexham AFC a.k.a The Red Dragons.
Interesting to note that the name Red Dragons was actually introduced by their then commercial manager in 2001-02 in order to help promote the image of the club for better sponsorship prospects that would in turn broaden the club’s Welsh image. Well, it has come a long way since then and commercial revenues have catapulted.
The Takeover
In late 2020, the duo from Hollywood, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds entered into exclusive negotiation period to purchase Wrexham AFC concluding the sale sometime around early February 2021. Right from the beginning, the pair’s intentions were to be in “it for the long haul” as put by former Liverpool chief executive Peter Moore who joins as adviser at Wrexham. As the ongoing season ends, the pair’s intentions begin to materialize in the form of crucial changes like confirmation of Phil Parkinson as the new manager, striker Paul Mullin joining from Cambridge United, striker Ollie Palmer joining from AFC Wimbledon for a club record fee of £300,000 etc.
In May 22, Wrexham narrowly misses out on promotions to the Football League after losing 5-4 to Grimsby Town in the play-off semi-final. The gain their winning march from 2022-23 onwards securing their title along with the first promotion to League Two in April 2023 by beating Boreham Wood 3-1. The winning journey continues in April 2024 in absolute style by defeating Forest Green 6-0 securing their second and back-to-back promotion to League One. And on 26th April, Wrexham AFC created history by defeating Charlton Athletic 3-0 to seal their promotion to the Championship, their third successive promotion.
Revenue Growth
Wrexham’s success story is underlined by the stunning growth in their revenue figures. Growing at a 65% CAGR, Wrexham’s total revenue has reached £26.725mn in 23/24 while they were in League One! To give a context, an average League One club revenue was reported to be £9.8mn (22/23 figure, as per Deloitte UK Annual Football Finance Report), that is almost one-third of the Wrexham revenue.
This was made possible with the help of extremely well-planned and astute marketing, a major role played by their ongoing documentary series, ‘Welcome to Wrexham’. The very-well received documentary, now in its fourth season, is instrumental in getting a 52.1% share of the total revenue from Rest-of-the-World, primarily North America, in the form of sponsorship, licensing etc. As a result, commercial revenue reached £13.18mn in 23/24, growing by a whopping 600% over 22/23, and contributed almost 49% of the total revenue in 23/24.
The growth in revenue is accompanied by a growth in wages too. Since takeover, wages have grown at a 40% CAGR to reach £11.04mn in 23/24. For a League One club, that is about 13% higher than the average, as per the 22/23 revenue figures in the Deloitte Annual Finance Report. The bigger problem of higher wages to revenue ratio (W/R), usually associated with clubs in the lower leagues, is taken care of in case of Wrexham due to their higher revenue. An average League One club W/R is 82% whereas for Wrexham, it’s 61%, much below the recommended 70% mark.
It’s important to note that the 23/24 accounts of the club also show, “that post 30 June 2024, the Club repaid the loans of £15.02m and interest owed to The R.R McReynolds Company LLC meaning the Club is now free of all loans towards its shareholders.”
Wrexham Buzzing
Not only on the field, Wrexham has also been buzzing off-the-field too, in every aspect from attendances to social media followers to merchandise sales. A glimpse of attendance increase can be understood from the fact that capacity of the SToK Racecourse Ground was increased to 12,868 on the 23 December 2023, up from the 10,771 at the start of the season and in the 24/25 season, the ground recorded an average attendance of 12,757, that is 99.13% occupancy! From a pre-Covid average attendance of 4,000, it is certainly a huge jump!
The growth wave in the number of Wrexham’s social media followers is an eye-popping 2000% since the takeover, as per BBC. A large part of the growth in social media is due to the constant influx of star-power during the matches and otherwise like presence of Channing Tatum, who filmed a Super Bowl advertisement with the Wrexham players. All the promotions and star-power push put together, Wrexham now enjoys a total follower count of 4.14mn (at the time of writing this blog) across Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube and TikTok combined comparable to the top teams across the ‘big five’ leagues.
In Conclusion
Wrexham AFC is having a fairy-tale time. And this really is down to the efforts of the two owners, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, who not only took things under the control but were as engaged and involved in the sporting side as well as the community side. It’s a classic case study combining the elements of vision, marketing, including strategy, stage-wise plan, storytelling and execution, and of-course supported by the brilliant on-field performances continuously for three successive years.
Here’s wishing Wrexham AFC all the very best for the EFL Championship ride!
Words & Images: SBI Barcelona
