‘A wild few months’: the inside story of Wrexham’s Hollywood takeover
It was throughout a cellphone name in May with the mysterious buyers hoping to purchase Wrexham that Spencer Harris twigged. “There was a guy called Rob on the call and from one or two of the things that he said, I guessed who he was. I kept that to myself for a couple of weeks,” he admits with a chuckle.
Nine years after the Wrexham Supporters Trust got here to the rescue of its debt-ridden membership, the arrival of new homeowners in the kind of the Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney this week has catapulted the city in north Wales into the highlight. But after 98.6% of votes solid by members of the belief supported their takeover, even Harris – who has served as one of 5 administrators since 2011 – has been having to pinch himself.
“I’m quite down to earth so when I met them for the first time I wasn’t too starstruck,” he says. “But when I did find out it was people with such significant global reach, it did seem quite surreal. It’s been a wild few months.”
The story started this 12 months when Harris was contacted by the Portsmouth chief government, Mark Catlin. “He knows the people who’ve been representing Ryan and Rob and he asked me if we’d be interested in having a conversation with them,” Harris recollects.
“In the early stages, that was very much a conversation about somebody being interested. We were told that they were very high-profile but they wanted to get to know a little bit more about the club first and see if it’s a good fit. We went through that process to get to the non-disclosure agreement and then we were introduced to Ryan and Rob.”
Reynolds and Elhenney had enlisted the companies of the New York-based sports activities funding specialists Inner Circle Sports LLC as they looked for the proper membership. Wrexham are of their thirteenth season in the National League having narrowly missed out on promotion after they completed second with a membership file 98 factors to a Jamie Vardy-inspired Fleetwood Town in 2012, and Harris insists the pair’s choice was no accident.
“Rob said he watched a lot of the things about the club and the town and he saw the types of people he recognised from his home town in Philadelphia,” he says. “That was actually enticing to him.
“They’ve done a heck of a lot of research. Over the last few months, Rob has really got into the detail and I know he has watched the parade from 1978 when we were promoted to the second tier for the first time. He’s really serious about it. They could easily have bought a club several rungs higher but I think they are interested in the journey. It’s very encouraging.”
Harris provides: “Because of the calibre of representatives that they’ve used to scour Europe in an try to search out the proper membership, I by no means thought this was only a gimmick. But you probably have seen the video they released speaking about our sponsors Ifor Williams, I believe they’ll have some enjoyable with it.
“We’ve only just had the vote and they’ve not even finished the sale and purchase agreement but they’ve already started having conversations with key stakeholders about returning sponsors and with the local authority, talking about what they can do for the community. That shows the type of people they are – they have real ambition for the club.”
News of their takeover has made world headlines, with Harris confirming that filming for a documentary which is able to observe their exploits has began, even it has but to be confirmed the place it will likely be broadcast. Harris, though excited at the prospect of seeing Wrexham’s story being instructed on the small display screen, is adamant that Reynolds’ and Elhenney’s precedence is guaranteeing success on the pitch.
“Some people have been a bit confused about the documentary – some people have suggested that it’s about the documentary rather than the football club. As I see it, the football club is the horse and the documentary is the cart. If you want to take your brand to a global level then what better way to do that? Here we are the third-oldest professional club in the world with the oldest international football stadium so there is a real story behind us.”
Harris provides: “Wrexham has a huge catchment area of around 900,000 – there’s a whole region that has nothing else and it’s an area that is football mad. Their vision is why can’t we go on this journey and why can’t we share this with an audience around the world? We’ve had the astronaut Chris Hadfield tweeting about us for a while and wearing a Wrexham kit and on Monday Russell Crowe was tweeting about how his grandfather came from the town. People are coming out of the woodwork everywhere.”
Reynolds and Elhenney plan to inject £2m of non-redeemable shares into the membership, though the belief will retain the lease for the Racecourse Ground and gather hire from their Hollywood A-list homeowners. For now, although, Harris is urging supporters to present them time as he steps away from a loving dedication that has consumed him.
“I’ve given it the best years of my life,” he says. “There’s a small group of us who have been running the club from the start and thousands of volunteers that have made us successful. We will hand over a club that, even after the pandemic, has cash in the bank and has zero debt. But I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and be too positive. We need to manage expectations because Rome wasn’t built in a day and I do think they will try to build Rome at Wrexham. The biggest challenge they have ahead of them is getting out of the National League.”
