On April 26, Wrexham AFC accomplished what was believed to be impossible, scoring its third consecutive promotion in three seasons. But though this accomplishment goes beyond even the loftiest dreams of the team’s owners, Wrexham AFC executive director and “Welcome to Wrexham” executive producer Humphrey Ker is still hesitant about what this record-breaking success means for the club’s future.
“For the players, the manager, for the people that are there day in and day out, fighting tooth and nail to deliver for the people of Wrexham, I’m so thrilled for them because that secures their place in football history,” Ker told TheWrap. “Obviously, we’ve been very spoiled for three years. We’ve been promoted three times, so you’re in danger of it becoming an expectation, in some ways.”
“Welcome to Wrexham” started as an underdog story. The first season of the FX docuseries followed Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney after they purchased the struggling football club, documenting their overhaul of a team beloved by its small town. But as the seasons — both in football and on television — ticked on, Wrexham AFC. became less of a sweet local story and more of a serious player in the sport. Four years after its Hollywood owners took over, Wrexham AFC’s worth has improved by more than 4,900%, coming in at an estimated £100 million.
When it comes to Wrexham’s rise through the ranks, Ker notes that the “ingredients” for success exist for many other teams: lots of money, talented players and dedicated people. But thanks to the docuseries, Wrexham has always had one special advantage.
“The documentary and the positivity and good will that’s come out of that actually played a very significant part. The one thing we have that no one else has — maybe that you can’t buy — is that togetherness and that sense of all pulling in the same direction,” Ker said. “I’ve talked to a lot of these players who’ve played professional football for 20-plus years or something, and a lot of them are saying, ‘I’ve never experienced anything quite like this’ … That’s the thing that we think is our special sauce, and we have to work very hard to keep it.”
But as Wrexham is in the middle of transitioning from underdog to a serious competitor, Ker has been bracing himself for a whole new set of challenges.
“I, for one, have always had this eye on the possibility that, at some stage, we’ll plateau to a certain extent, and we’ll find ourselves in a situation where we’re not winning every week. We’re not doing extraordinary things,” Ker said. “How we’ll react to that, how the wider world will react to that, we ultimately have to see. But we at least are armed with the foreknowledge that it is probably going to come.”
Ker admitted that a season where Wrexham AFC doesn’t surpass its expectations or even succeed would make for a “really fascinating ” season of the FX docuseries, which was recently renewed for a Season 5.
“How do we all respond to that? But, unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do other than just say, ‘Well, we’ll see.’ We’re fortunate that our ambitions and the resources available to us have allowed us to achieve what we’ve done so far,” Ker said. “I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to reach the top. You get into a situation where you are playing teams with 60-to-80,000 seat stadiums, and their match day income for one game is more than we take in an entire season right now. But we’ll just keep charging at them, tilting at windmills and see how we get on.”
The club’s success has also led to another surprising headache: How do you balance this new era of mass media attention and corporate sponsorship with the local ethos of Wrexham?
“We’re seeing an awful lot of kind of new money pouring into Wrexham that has nothing to do with us,” Ker explained. “What’s a challenge for us, and we have to try and keep to the fore, is remaining receptive, open and friendly to local businesses and local sponsors. Those are the people that kept the club going for years and years and years before we came along. We’ve got to try and make sure there’s always a blend of international, national and local.”
One of the best examples of the club’s commitment to its local roots actually involved Ker. After Reynolds and McElhenney heard that Ker was supporting a marathon for Wrexham Miners Project, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Wrexham’s mining history, they upped the stakes. The two owners pledged to donate a substantial amount of money to the organization only if Ker actually ran the marathon. The season follows Ker as he trains with sports training professionals like Wrexham A.F.C.’s Kevin Mulholland and Richard Hill as well as Dr. Ian Rollo, a sports scientist from Gatorade, to raise £250,000 for the charity.
“I was very spoiled,” he said. “I had incredible support, and I very much credit them with getting me through the whole blasted thing.”
Ker’s begrudging marathon training may serve as comedic relief, but it also stands as an example of the club’s investment in the town. At the moment, some of the money from Wrexham A.F.C.’s sponsors, which include HP and United, go into its Community Foundation, which feeds back into the city. Also, the club’s success on the pitch paired with the the fandom around the docuseries has led to a boost in tourism. At least for now, Ker isn’t worried about Wrexham A.F.C. becoming “too corporate.”
“I do worry that we will in the future because, as organizations get bigger, it’s harder to keep that sense of identity that you had at the start. But we all strive against becoming boring corporate suits for as long as we possibly can,” he said.
It’s because of the team’s commitment to Wrexham itself that the club and the docuseries have started to pay more attention to Wrexham A.F.C. Women.
“We know that our women’s team is very inspirational to lots of young girls in Wrexham and North Wales. We’re in the process of trying to get our women’s academy really up and running to a great degree because the trajectory of women’s football is a very, very pleasing, upward one. So we want to be right in the mix with all of that as much as anybody,” Ker said.
Though Ker noted that the women’s team struggled a bit at the start of their season, the team’s victories over Swansea City Ladies F.C. and Cardiff City F.C. — two traditional powerhouses of Welsh women’s football — were promising. “We’re catching them up, slowly but surely. We didn’t win the league, but hopefully next year,” Ker said.
One of the biggest complications the club is currently facing has to do with its women’s team after Steve Dale resigned as the manager for Wrexham A.F.C. Women. When TheWrap spoke to Ker for this interview, he noted that they were in the beginning stages of finding Dale’s replacement.
“I’m very sad to see [Steve Dale] go, but that’s the nature of things. He found opportunities elsewhere. So now we are charged with the task of finding the next great leader of that organization,” Ker said. “Whoever comes in will be almost certainly be a big feature of next season.”
Welcome to Wrexham” airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on FX and streams the next day on Hulu.
