Wrexham have enjoyed a remarkable rise since Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney took over in February 2021, securing three consecutive promotions to climb from the National League to the Championship.
While their success on the pitch has been clear, the club’s off-field operations have been equally as impressive.
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On the latest episode of The Athletic FC Podcast, Ayo Akinwolere was joined by Matt Slater and Wrexham correspondent Richard Sutcliffe to discuss how the club’s impressive turnover figures will give them a solid foundation to compete in the Championship. Watch the full episode below.
A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on YouTube below or in The Athletic FC Podcast feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Ayo: In March, The Athletic reported how at the end of June 2024, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney had lost almost £11million ($14.7m) in getting Wrexham to League One. But Sooty, you wrote that last season their turnover had more than doubled to £26.7m in their first year back in the EFL. With more success, that turnover should only rise, shouldn’t it?
Richard: Absolutely. Those turnover levels came in League Two, the bottom division, so to get that sort of money is unheard of at that level. I’m told the income won’t be massively different this year in League One, and obviously they’ve just gained promotion. But that now takes them into a new division where we’re talking about teams with incomes in the £100m range because of the parachute payments, which is a very different playing field to where they’ve been before. It’s going to be tough, but that turnover can only grow.
It sounds like they need to get into the Premier League to really hit the mainstream in America. But even though they’re nowhere near that right now, they’re still earning a lot of money for a team at their level. You mentioned that £26.7m; 52 per cent of that sum came from abroad, most of it from North America. Which again shows the strengths of their business model. Even though it sounds like they’ve got a hell of a long way to go, they could keep growing that. They are on a different playing field now with the money in the Championship because you’ve got clubs who are losing £25m just to tread water and end up in the middle of the division.
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But what I will say about them going up is they’ve got a bit of headroom if they want to go for it. You mentioned that huge income level, but they still lost £2.7m last season and I’ve been told it’s going to be a similar loss this season, so we’re talking about £5.5m. That means next year, if they wanted to, they could still lose £35m and be within the Championship’s PSR rules. If they did go straight up again then obviously they’d have problems the following year because they couldn’t then breach it any further than that. But they’ve got some headroom to have a go, and I’m fascinated by what they do this summer because they haven’t really spent irresponsibly.
They’d spent a lot of money on wages until January, but up to then, until a year ago, their record transfer fee was £300,000. They then broke that, but it was still only £590,000 for Mo Faal back in September. In January, they then spent £2m on Sam Smith, around £500,000 on Ryan Longman, and took over Jay Rodriguez’s Burnley contract, which was a significant step forward for the club. But there’s going to be a hell of a lot more than that now if they’re going to prosper rather than sink in the Championship.
Matt: If you look at Wrexham’s turnover profile, half of it is commercial, which is like a ‘Big Six’ club. That’s what I would expect to see from Liverpool, Man City or United. They’ve also quadrupled their turnover since the National League days. It was £6m, but it’s now around £26m, and heading into the £27m to £28m range. And this is always a year behind, so that is a League Two snapshot we’ve got. A big club in League Two — like Bradford with the biggest gates — earned about £9m, so they’re three times bigger than them. Then, if you think about a big club in League One like Portsmouth who got promoted last year, they went up with a turnover of £13.5m, so they’re twice as big as Portsmouth in terms of turnover.
Again, because Richard has told us their turnover number is going to be similar for this season, they’re already earning more than Hull City, Preston, and loads of other clubs. And the way the Championship works is you either get a parachute payment or you don’t. Parachute payments for clubs tend to be about £6m, but it’s lower at the moment because it’s three up and three down, and we just keep replacing them (Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich went straight back down). There are fewer clubs than there traditionally have been with parachute payments, but they average a turnover of between £60m to £70m. There are some £100m clubs, but those are very rare. They’re your Leeds Uniteds or Leicester Citys. Typically, a parachute payment club is £60m to £70m. Then the 18 or 19 others are on about £20m to £25m. Well, guess what? Wrexham are already there. And that’s before they get the £9m boost on TV revenues, meaning Wrexham are going to go into the Championship as the best-of-the-rest in terms of turnover.
You can listen to full episodes of The Athletic FC Podcast for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and watch on YouTube.
(Top Photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
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