In a truly Hollywood moment, Welsh football club Wrexham AFC has achieved something that no club in English football history has ever achieved before: back-to-back-to-back promotions through England’s multi-tier football pyramid.
After their thumping 3–0 win over Charlton Athletic at home, Wrexham is officially slated to move up to the Championship, England’s second-tier league of football and the stepping stone to one of the world’s most competitive football leagues, the English Premier League. This feat started in 2022–23 when Wrexham won the fifth-tier National League to head to fourth-tier League Two in the 2023–24 season. It won promotion again to third-tier League One for the 2024–25 season, and just now won promotion to the Championship for the 2025–26 season.
So, how did Wales’ oldest club, founded in 1864, suddenly find unprecedented success in only the last few years?
Hollywood itself played a role in this Hollywood moment. Specifically, millionaire A-list actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney purchased struggling Wrexham in 2020 with 98 percent approval from the club’s 2000 member supporters trust. Reynolds, best known for his titular role in Marvel’s Deadpool series, and McElhenney, best known for his role as Mac in the hit comedy series It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, formed the RR McReynolds Company, LLC and purchased 100 percent control over the club for $2.5 million in February 2021.
The impetus behind this decision was McElhenney’s pandemic obsession with English football club Sunderland AFC’s 2018 Netflix documentary Sunderland ’Til I Die. He wanted to purchase his own football club and create his own docu-series. At this point, he had a budding online friendship with Reynolds after he had sent McElhenney a kind message about his performance in It’s Always Sunny, and it was McElhenney who suggested that together they should purchase a club and pursue this Hollywood endeavor. After purchasing fifth-tier Wrexham, a club with loyal supporters from a working-class town, they immediately set to work and premiered the docu-series Welcome to Wrexham in April 2022.
The publicity, while not the main reason behind the docuseries, was earth-shattering for Wrexham. In the decades prior to their purchase of the club, Wrexham was a failing team. Wrexham had its glory days in the mid- to late-twentieth century — including a stunning 2–1 underdog win against reigning English first-tier champions Arsenal FC in the 1992 FA Cup competition — but after winning the Welsh Cup for the last time in 1995, financial mismanagement led to the club’s harsh fall from grace.
In 2011, the club’s ownership was forced to liquidate, and management transferred to Wrexham’s supporters. At the same time, Wrexham fell out of the Football League in 2008 and struggled until 2020 to return. Wrexham was revitalized because of the two millionaires’ passion project, which put the team back on the global stage.
Publicity from Welcome to Wrexham combined with Reynolds’ and McElhenney’s continued investment allowed for a massive financial boost for the club. In turn, this boost materialized critically in the form of signing new, high-performing players. In the 2019–20 season, Wrexham lost six players and were only able to bring in three from clubs at a similar level of play. In the 2020–21 season, after the ownership change, Wrexham shed 10 of its players but brought in 15, many of whom were from the academies and reserves of teams higher in the footballing pyramid.
One such example was their signing of right-back Reece Hall-Johnson from League Two side Northampton Town FC who ended up spending three seasons at Wrexham and contributed greatly to the club’s defender depth. The following season, still playing in the National League, Wrexham brought in Paul Mullin — a former Everton FC and Liverpool FC academy kid — from Cambridge United FC, and he quickly became their star striker during the 2021–22, 2022–23, and 2023–24 seasons. A prolific goalscorer, Mullin won numerous accolades with the club and directly helped Wrexham win their promotions to League Two and further League One. Reynolds even adored Mullin enough to give him a cameo as the character Welshpool in Reynolds’ latest 2024 film Deadpool & Wolverine. This is all to say that Wrexham’s success depended largely on its players, which stemmed from Reynolds’ and McElhenney’s investment.
However, this model of success is not sustainable or even replicable to other clubs, as the careful circumstances that surrounded this change made Wrexham’s rise back to the Football League feasible. The chances of completing this back-to-back-to-back promotion feat were even slimmer, but there were the perfect conditions that made it so. As the club brought in new players each season increasingly from higher leagues, Wrexham was able to not only endure but outperform their opponents. In many games, it cinched last-minute goals to earn full points, and it barely made it to automatic promotion in League Two following a draw and loss in their final two games of the season.
In this sense, it feels like Reynolds’ and McElhenney’s investment feels like a pay-to-win maneuver. And, in a way, it is.
Had it not been for their purchasing of the club alongside investment of both time and money, Wrexham would have likely been unable to sign the players it did and win the matches it won to get promoted. The sponsorship deals that the Hollywood stars brought in, such as those with TikTok and United Airlines, would probably have never been considered. Even less likely would have been its ability to perform consistently enough to stay in a new league, let alone win promotion. Some clubs spend years in a league attempting to win a promotion spot, more often than not falling short of that goal.
However, it would be remiss to not attribute the continued dedication to the club’s development, and equally, the players’ continued motivation to bring the club to glory as significant reasons behind their climb through the footballing pyramid. Also, what Wrexham did not do was attempt to sign superstars, such as how in 2011 Qatar Sports Investments bought 87.5 percent of French Ligue 1 side Paris Saint-Germain and were able to fund the transfers of generational talents — Lionel Messi, Neymar Jr., and Kylian Mbappé, for example — to install the club as perpetual reigning champions of Ligue 1. Wrexham’s development of players instead was carefully curated, building slowly but surely over the past few years. So, while, of course, money played a large role in their success, a significant portion had to do with strategic planning and passion for and by the team.
Now, as Wrexham finishes up their last few games of the 2024–25 season and prepares to move up to the Championship, it will be interesting to see how the club fares in this uncharted territory. Though the Championship is the second tier of English football, it is nothing to be underestimated. In many global football rankings, the Championship is listed as more competitive than many countries’ first-tier leagues, such as Mexico’s LigaMX and Poland’s Ekstraklasa.
While Wrexham has had incredible momentum these past few years, another continuous promotion out of the Championship to the Premier League is unlikely. It is in the Championship that clubs spend years attempting to break through. Wrexham’s new opponents will more likely than not be veterans of England’s most competitive leagues, posing a whole new challenge for the Welsh side. But, there is still the summer transfer window to see which new players Wrexham will sign and perhaps spark the chance of another promotion to England’s top flight football league.
