In Wrexham, the ‘Rob and Ryan effect’ goes beyond the soccer club the Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought and revived, as tourism and investments grow in the small Welsh city, which has rapidly become one of Britain’s most unlikely tourist hot spots.
Since the pair launched the fly-on-the-wall “Welcome to Wrexham” TV series, the team’s players and some of Wrexham’s residents have become familiar faces on screens around the world. (Some of the players even had parts in Reynolds’ recent “Deadpool and Wolverine” film).
And the result is that tourists from around the world are now coming to find out more about this long-overlooked Welsh city with an urban population of 45,000.
In the local pub, The Turf, Nelson Aguedelo, an engineer from Bogota, Colombia, said, “We came to Wrexham because of the TV documentary. We got to know the city because of that, and we just wanted to see it for ourselves.”
It’s a familiar story being told across this former market, mining, and brewing town, whose status has been transformed after its down-on-its-luck soccer club was bought by Canadian Reynolds and McElhenney (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) for $2.5 million in 2021.
“When we think of Ryan Reynolds, we think of Wrexham,” said Linda Williams, 70, a visitor from Canada, as she walked through the city centre during a three-week trip to Wales.
Tourism revenue in Wrexham reached about 180 million pounds (CDN$323 million) in 2023, up 20% from the year before and almost 50% since 2018, according to Ian Bancroft, chief executive of Wrexham County Borough Council.
“We know from our tourism stats that the classic tourist route is America-Windsor-Wrexham-home,” Bancroft said, referring to Windsor Castle, the royal fortress outside London.
As “the Rob and Ryan effect” – as some are labeling it – takes hold, the local economy has been boosted by businesses investing in, or relocating to, Wrexham.
And boutique hotels are popping up across the city, while Hannah Thomas, a local property manager, said more North Americans are buying flats in the area and renting them out on Airbnb to tourists coming to watch the soccer.
Meanwhile, Wrexham Lager, a brewery that sponsors the team and boasts to being the only lager available on the Titanic’s doomed voyage in 1912, said it has gained such visibility from the TV series that it is expanding internationally, including to Canada. In fact, Reynolds and McElhenney just bought the brewery in late October.
And supported by PR from Reynolds and McElhenney, Wrexham is bidding to become the UK City of Culture for 2029. It only gained city status in 2022.
The takeover of the soccer club and the TV series have “acted as a catalyst to supercharge the change in Wrexham,” Bancroft said. “Wrexham’s growth would be happening, but it might only be 1/50th of what it is now.”
Wrexham is Wales’ fourth-largest city by population and a short drive from major northwest England hubs of Liverpool and Manchester. It was built on heavy industry, agriculture and mining, but has failed to punch its weight as the major urban region of north Wales in recent years. Now, though, there’s optimism and aspiration.
The first destination for overseas visitors is invariably Wrexham’s soccer ground, the Racecourse, which is the world’s oldest soccer stadium hosting international matches that is still in use. Connected to it is The Turf, a lively centerpiece in the documentary series.
Janice Hopp, a 72-year-old retired speech language therapist from Terre Haute, Indiana, had never been outside the US until she travelled to Wrexham with her son, Casey, after being charmed by the TV series. Her first stop? The Turf.
“This is what she wanted to be a part of – to see The Turf, to see the club, to get a peak inside (the stadium),” Casey said. “We built a whole nine-day excursion to the UK around it and it’s been glorious.”
The pub’s manager, Wayne Jones, has become a celebrity in his own right owing to his frequent appearances in “Welcome to Wrexham,” with actors Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd among those visiting the pub. Jones even allowed Prince William behind the bar to pour a pint.
Upon taking over the club, Reynolds and McElhenney also pledged to make a “positive difference to the wider community in Wrexham,” and so far they’ve stayed true to their word.
Once Wrexham completes the redevelopment of its once-imposing Kop stand, scheduled for 2026, there’s a commitment for the Racecourse to host qualifying matches for international tournaments for Wales’ men’s national team. That year, a new Football Museum for Wales is scheduled to open near the stadium.
McElhenney has pledged to help turn a disused site in the city centre into a community space that can stage events. He also announced the team’s chosen charity this season would be the “Wrexham Miners Project,” which works to preserve the history of Wrexham’s mining community – a cause close to the city’s heart because of a local mining disaster in 1934 in which 266 people died.
Pub manager Jones says of the city’s new benefactors, “They seem to have taken Wrexham and our people to their hearts.”
He adds, “The town was struggling, businesses in it were struggling and we’ve landed very lucky. Every day, and most Wrexham fans will agree with this, we just wake up and pinch ourselves because we’ve hit the jackpot, haven’t we?”
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