In Wrexham, the ‘Rob and Ryan effect’ goes beyond the soccer club as tourism and investments grow

WREXHAM, Wales — Clutching a pint of Guinness in one hand and flicking through photos on his cell phone in the other, Nestor Aguedelo laughed and joked with his wife and sister-in-law in a corner of The Turf, a pub in north Wales that has rapidly become one of Britain’s most unlikely tourist hot spots.

“We came to Wrexham because of the TV documentary,” said Aguedelo, an engineer from Bogota, Colombia. “We got to know the city because of that, and we just wanted to see it for ourselves.”

It’s a familiar story being told across this former market, mining and brewing town, whose status has been transformed after its down-on-its-luck soccer club was bought by Hollywood celebrities Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney for $2.5 million in 2021.

That notoriety has only increased since the pair launched a fly-on-the-wall TV series — “Welcome to Wrexham” — that has turned the team’s players and some of Wrexham’s residents into familiar faces on screens around the world.

Tourists from around the world are now coming to find out more about this long-overlooked Welsh city with an urban population of 45,000.

“When we think of Ryan Reynolds, we think of Wrexham,” said Linda Williams, 70, a visitor from Reynolds’ native Canada, as she walked through the city center during a three-week trip to Wales.

Tourism revenue in Wrexham reached about 180 million pounds ($235 million) in 2023, up 20% from the year before and almost 50% since 2018, according to Ian Bancroft, chief executive of Wrexham County Borough Council.

“We know from our tourism stats that the classic tourist route is America-Windsor-Wrexham-home,” Bancroft said, referring to Windsor Castle, the royal fortress outside London where Prince Harry married Meghan Markle in 2018.

As “the Rob and Ryan effect” — as some are labeling it — takes hold, the local economy has been boosted by businesses investing in, or relocating to, Wrexham.

American food manufacturer Kellogg’s recently announced it is creating Europe’s largest cereal factory in Wrexham’s industrial estate with a $100 million investment delivering at least 130 jobs as part of a relocation.

Boutique hotels are popping up across the city, while Hannah Thomas, a local property manager, said more Americans are buying flats in the area and renting them out on Airbnb to tourists coming to watch the soccer.

Meanwhile, Wrexham Lager, a brewery which sponsors the team and boasts to being the only lager available on the Titanic’s doomed voyage in 1912, said it has gained such visibility from the TV series that it is expanding internationally.

“We’ve started to make more significant strides in the past 12 months by growing our Welsh retailer footprint, expanding across the U.K., launching into Scandinavia and Australia, and plan to go live in Canada and the U.S. in the coming months,” said James Wright, the company’s CEO.

Supported by PR from Reynolds and McElhenney, Wrexham is bidding to become the U.K. City of Culture for 2029. It only gained city status in 2022.

The takeover of the soccer club and the TV series have “acted as a catalyst to supercharge the change in Wrexham,” Bancroft said in an interview in the council’s offices. “Wrexham’s growth would be happening, but it might only be 1/50th of what it is now.”

Wrexham is Wales’ fourth-largest city by population and a short drive from major northwest England hubs of Liverpool and Manchester. It was built on heavy industry, agriculture and mining, but has failed to punch its weight as the major urban region of north Wales in recent years.

A tired-looking city center contains some empty, boarded-up stores. Memories remain of race riots on a Wrexham estate that made national headlines in 2003.

Now, though, there’s optimism and aspiration.

The first destination for overseas visitors is invariably Wrexham’s soccer ground, the Racecourse, which is the world’s oldest soccer stadium hosting international matches that is still in use. Connected to it is The Turf, a lively centerpiece in the documentary series.

Janice Hopp, a 72-year-old retired speech language therapist from Terre Haute, Indiana, had never been outside the United States until she traveled to Wrexham with her son, Casey, after being charmed by the TV series.

Her first stop? The Turf.

“This is what she wanted to be a part of — to see The Turf, to see the club, to get a peak inside (the stadium),” Casey said after having a drink inside the pub. “We built a whole nine-day excursion to the U.K around it and it’s been glorious.”

The pub’s manager, Wayne Jones, has become a celebrity in his own right owing to his frequent appearances in “Welcome to Wrexham,” with actors Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd among those visiting the pub.

Jones even allowed Prince William behind the bar to pour a pint.

“The Turf was very similar to Wrexham as a whole — the town was struggling, businesses in it were struggling and we’ve landed very lucky,” Jones said of what he describes as his “little boozer.”

“Every day, and most Wrexham fans will agree with this, we just wake up and pinch ourselves because we’ve hit the jackpot, haven’t we?”

The soccer team certainly has: Wrexham has just achieved back-to-back promotions to climb to the third tier, where it is in second place two months into the new season. Reynolds and McElhenney’s dream is to reach the lucrative Premier League.

In March, a Wrexham director said the team’s value was 9 million pounds ($11.8 million) — more than four times the original purchasing price — and Wrexham has gone up one division since then.

Upon taking over the club, Reynolds and McElhenney also pledged to make a “positive difference to the wider community in Wrexham,” and so far they’ve stayed true to their word.

Once Wrexham completes the redevelopment of its once-imposing Kop stand, scheduled for 2026, there’s a commitment for the Racecourse to host qualifying matches for international tournaments for Wales’ men’s national team. That year, a new Football Museum for Wales is scheduled to open near the stadium.

McElhenney has pledged to help turn a disused site in the city center into a community space that can stage events. He also announced the team’s chosen charity this season would be the “Wrexham Miners Project, ” which works to preserve the history of Wrexham’s mining community — a cause close to the city’s heart because of a local mining disaster in 1934 in which 266 people died.

Then there’s the intangible benefits of the takeover.

“I don’t think Wrexham will ever change its identity — Wrexham will always be Wrexham — but it is changing its vibe and attitude. It’s becoming positive,” said the Rev. Petra Goodband, the associate priest for St. Giles Church in the city center. “So even if Rob and Ryan just tick along with the football club, their energy has been put into Wrexham, and made Wrexham a place that has pride in itself again.”

The council awarded Reynolds and McElhenney the freedom of Wrexham, the city’s top civic honor, in 2022 and initial concerns over their intentions seem to have disappeared, certainly among fans of the soccer team who, not long ago, clubbed together to save it from going out of business.

“We’ve had some absolute charlatans over the years and obviously people were skeptical because we’ve been robbed from pillar to post,” Jones said, “but fast-forward four years and I don’t think there’s any doubt.

“They seem to have taken Wrexham and our people to their hearts.”

___

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer