Updated May 2, 2025 at 3:17 PM EDT
When Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney took over a struggling Welsh football club almost five years ago, they had a pretty big dream.
Speaking to reporters in 2021 about their ambitions, Reynolds said they hoped to take Wrexham AFC from the National League – the fifth tier in the English football system – all the way to the Premier League, where the likes of legendary clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool play.
"You realize you started by saying we're going to take Wrexham to the Premier League and they all recorded it," McElhenney joked to Reynolds in a video posted to the club's YouTube page.
At the pace Wrexham is going, that dream isn't far off.
Wrexham secured its third straight promotion in front of its fans on April 26 in a 3-0 win over Charlton Athletic. Next year, it'll play in the English Championship, a tier below the Premier League.
Roger Bennett, commentator and founder of soccer media company Men in Blazers, told Morning Edition host A Martínez that Wrexham's rise is "like a baseball team going from the rookie league in the fifth tier all the way to Triple-A" – a level below the MLB.
"It's been like watching Cool Runnings, in which the Jamaican bobsleigh team ends up winning Olympic gold, albeit in a sled sponsored by two Hollywood superstars," Bennett said.
The role Reynolds and McElhenney have played
The club's success on the pitch and its Hollywood backing have led to a spike in its overall value and revenue over the past years, the BBC reports.
Bennett said the duo, famous for their roles in Deadpool and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, have also approached the task "with a real humility," breathing life into the post-industrial mining town in north Wales.
"I grew up a stone's throw from Wrexham and what they've done is transform a region economically that was deemed left for dead, cast the world's spotlight on it," Bennett said.
Tourism revenue in Wrexham rose to $235 million in 2023, up 20% from the previous year and up 50% since 2018, the Associated Press reported last year.
The two also helped launch the Hulu series Welcome to Wrexham, which follows the club's seasons.
"They've learned about the club and the fan base. They've always put that first in the television show that they've welded onto the side of the club so that the world has fallen in love with this cast of characters Welcome to Wrexham and watching them put it first," Bennett said.
Can Wrexham make it all the way to the Premier League?
The English Championship is a notoriously difficult league. It features clubs that were relegated from the Premier League the prior season or in recent years – and some still have elite talent that helped them compete at the highest level.
The clubs tend to have larger fan bases and bigger stadiums that help generate more revenue. Wrexham's stadium currently holds almost 13,000 people. By comparison, this year's current Championship leader, Leeds United, has a stadium capacity of almost 40,000.
Clubs also have more experienced front offices capable of signing talented players and landing major sponsorship deals.
Next season, Wrexham will play against Ipswich Town, Leicester City and Southampton – the three teams relegated this year from the Premier League. Despite poor seasons, each team could still get more than $100 million payouts that will soften the blow of their fall from the top.
Bennett compared Wrexham to a "cuddly bunch of unicorns and Care Bears."
"The Championship is an unforgiving knife fight in which money wins out," he continued "It's kind of fought in the prison yard with homemade shivs, so [it'll] be a lot less cuddly."
But Bennett says he wouldn't bet against them winning promotion again next year. "There'll be a whole new level of characters coming in to play for them. A whole new set of Star Wars cantina-worthy human beings welding themselves to the Wrexham story," Bennett said.
"I can imagine the time in which the great Real Madrid are working out where they can park the bus at Wrexham for a Champions League game," he added.
Wrexham's final game of the season is away against Lincoln City on May 3.
The radio version of this story was produced by Taylor Haney and Nia Dumas.
Copyright 2025 NPR
