Amount Wrexham owes celebrity owners piles up
Owning a soccer club is hitting Ryan Reynolds in the wallet.
Wrexham, the Welsh team bought by Reynolds and fellow Hollywood actor Rob Mcelhenney in 2021, released its accounts for the latest financial year on Thursday and reported that the amount owed to celebrities has risen to nearly nine million pounds ($15.3 million).
That was up from 3.7 million pounds from the previous year, ending June 2022.
While the club said turnover rose from nearly six million pounds to 10.5 million pounds and that future prospects are positive, its losses increased to 5.1 million pounds from 2.9 million pounds.
Reynolds and Mcelhenney purchased Wrexham, one of the world’s oldest soccer teams, for US$2.5 million while the club was in the fifth tier of the English game.
It has since been promoted to the English Football League and is bidding for back-to-back promotions, which would take the team to third-tier League One.
Wrexham was third in League Two heading into a home game against leader Mansfield on Friday. The top three teams at the end of the season are automatically promoted and the next four enter a playoff for one last promotion spot. Heading into Friday, Wrexham was three points above fourthplace MK Dons with a game in hand.
Wrexham said the losses were “deemed necessary to allow the club to maximize its full potential in the shortest time practically possible.”
“The club is under no immediate pressure to repay these loans at the expense of the progress we seek to achieve,” Wrexham said, “and further financial support will be provided/ secured to support the capital expenditure projects the club is currently planning.”
Those projects include increasing the capacity of its Racecourse Ground stadium. Wrexham is regularly getting crowds of more than 10,000 spectators, more than three times the number attending before the takeover and a remarkable figure for a fourth-tier team.