The documentary series Welcome to Wrexham has spent a fair amount of time exploring how Wrexham has fallen on hard times in recent decades. By juxtaposing that with Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s purchase of Wrexham AFC, the show’s producers have positioned these hard times as the first act of a feel-good underdog sports story. Certainly, this is an inspiring narrative structure. A working-class town facing economic struggle rallies behind the local football club as it vies for league promotion, the team's success symbolizing a reversal of Wrexham's fortunes. Except, ultimately, that’s all it would be: empty symbolism.
As rousing as this potential sports redemption arc is likely to be, it conceals a darker truth about professional sports in general. A winning team has little to do with a region's economic health. Instead, it distracts the people from their very real problems while siphoning resources that could help solve those problems. In fact, as Welcome to Wrexham shows in Episode 6, “Hamilton!” fans raised over 100,000 pounds to prevent the club from going under in 2014. The series presents this as proof of the town's dedication to the team, but in reality, it is an example of how professional sports organizations can misuse and exploit fan loyalty for financial gain.
To be fair, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds do seem to genuinely care about the fans of Wrexham AFC. That, to some degree, seems to be a big motivating factor in their quest to improve the team and its facilities. They've even added multiple volunteers to the organization's payroll. However, as heartwarming as that is, the end goal of all of this is money. Promotion means more league funds and more lucrative corporate partnerships. Whatever notions of civic pride and fan loyalty may factor into buying a sports franchise, team ownership is, ultimately, a profit-focused endeavor.
Still, it's possible that McElhenney and Reynolds have bought into the idea that success for Wrexham AFC will translate into success for Wrexham as a whole. Welcome to Wrexham certainly seems to promote this view. The opening credits start with images of the town's coal mining and steel-producing roots before moving through the loss of those industries and ending with a shot of the historic Racecourse Grounds gleaming in the Welsh sun. Wrexham's hard times will end just as soon as its football club can win promotion out of the National League.
Except, regardless of what anyone involved with Welcome to Wrexham actually believes, such a sequence of events is a fantasy. No sports team, well-intentioned or otherwise, can save the economy of a town built on one industry -- coal -- that is dying a necessary death. Winning seasons and better leagues could definitely improve morale for Wrexham, but they can't create good, sustainable jobs for the more than 60,000 people who live there.
Welcome to Wrexham is a promotional tool for Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney and the Welsh soccer team they bought together. As such, viewers should take its presentation of people and events with a grain of salt. Still, assuming Reynolds and McElhenney are sincere in their desire to do right by both the team and the town, they would do well to unlearn the lessons that inspirational sports films and their own sports fandom may have taught them over the years. The Philadelphia Eagles' 2018 Super Bowl victory was, by his own admission, one of the greatest moments of Rob McElhenney's life, but at that point, he was already a hugely successful TV writer, actor and producer.
Even if he saw the win as good for Philadelphia in a wider sense, it wouldn't have affected him directly if that hadn't been the case. The average Wrexham AFC fan doesn't have that luxury. When league promotion doesn't result in economic opportunity for Wrexham as a whole, the people will need to find another way to survive. By prioritizing a thrilling narrative over the complex truth, Welcome to Wrexham has set up an entire town for bitter disappointment. Hopefully, the series' two leading men will realize this before it's too late.