‘Challenge’ of Ryan Reynolds & Rob McElhenney taking a Wrexham game to the United States explained after Birmingham request

There had been talk of Birmingham pulling Wrexham into plans to stage a League One meeting between the two clubs in America, but Reynolds distanced the Red Dragons from those plans after the EFL gave it short shrift. Michael Williamson, chief executive at SToK Racecourse, has now told The Athletic of taking a game to the States: “They understand that it’s important to have competitive matches going to those new markets and those expanding markets in order to be able to expand their fan base. Football clubs are community organisations first and foremost but they’re also global brands. And that’s what you’re seeing a lot of these leagues understand.”

He added on potential hurdles: “EFL clubs are playing 50-plus matches during the course of a season, between all the cups. There is wear and tear on players, and a lot of demand on the staff. So when you add in the logistical challenges of, ‘Hey, it’s not a two-hour bus ride, but rather an eight-hour flight with a five-hour time difference,’ that just makes it challenging to actually execute. The challenge that you have to balance is how do you make sure that your local fanbase and your local community still feels connected and that you’re not just moving an important game away from them for marketing or commercial purposes. That’s important. It is an open league. So promotion and relegation have real impact. And so you want the best opportunity as a club to be able to create an environment where it’s difficult for an opposing club to come into.”

Wrexham will continue to welcome new fans through their doors for now, with Williamson saying of the surge in interest that pulls in four million viewers per episode for their documentary and regularly sees “bus loads” of visitors descend on North Wales: “If you put us in context with Major League Soccer, the average viewership was around 343,000 (before MLS began a contract with Apple in 2022). For a match for the MLS Cup, it was around 890,000 combined. It is different in the sense that we’re talking about a documentary versus a 90-minute match. So it’s not comparing apples to apples. But I’ve been on the ground in Wrexham, in the team store and the number of American people who add Wrexham as a destination on their UK tour or a UK visit shocked me. We have people coming in here literally by the bus loads.”

Wrexham have delivered back-to-back promotions for their ambitions chairmen, lifting them up into League One. They will be returning to North America for friendly games this summer, before kicking off the 2024-25 campaign at home to Wycombe on August 10.