How 'Welcome to Wrexham' kickstarted a $250-million economic boom for Welsh town

"Welcome to Wrexham," the Emmy-winning docuseries that follows the tributes and travails of a lower-division soccer club in North Wales, isn't a reality show. Nor is it scripted TV.

It's real life.

And the problem with real life is it happens at its own pace. So when "Wrexham" kicks off its fifth season Thursday on FXX and Hulu, everyone will already know how it ends - with our plucky, overachieving heroes failing to reach the playoffs that would have given them a shot at promotion to the Premier League.

That's not the Hollywood ending co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac were hoping to happen, but it certainly fits the plot the two actors created when they bought the team five years ago.

"There's nothing more romantic than sports," Reynolds said. "We don't have any control over its outcome. It's why we tune in."

Romance aside, "Welcome to Wrexham" was never really about soccer. Just like the timeline that controls it, the show was about real life. And in real life, you don't always get to play in the Premier League, so the story becomes about the journey, not the destination.

That's a much more romantic story. It's also the one the show has been telling since the start.

The star has never been the team, it's been the town of Wrexham and the people who live there - some of whom play soccer. The town dates to the Middle Ages and has long been defined by coal mining, followed by steelworks and manufacturing. By the 1980s, however, many of the area's mines and factories had closed and the slow withdrawal of the industries that built the place left Wrexham facing the same post-industrial fate that had decimated blue-collar communities all over the world.

By 2022, Wrexham had the third-lowest employment rate in Wales.

The town's soccer team mirrored that decline, having fallen to the fifth level of the English soccer pyramid. So when Reynolds and Mac bought the team and embarked on their docuseries, they hoped that by rebuilding the team they could also revitalize the down-on-its-luck town.

"The stories just keep coming, on and off the pitch, over and over and over again," Mac said. "We're not just telling the story of a football team, but of a working-class town in the north of Wales."

That's arguably a better story. After the first season of the docuseries was released in September 2022, Google searches for Wrexham jumped about 30%, a University of Michigan study found. As the series continued, metrics measuring employment, per-capita GDP, social-service spending and mental health improved significantly.

The region is now a major Welsh tourist hub, attracting more than 2 million visitors annually. That's up 20% from 2021 and it's generating a quarter-billion dollars in revenue.

The team underwent a similar transformation, becoming the first in English soccer history to earn promotion in three consecutive seasons, rising from the National League to the EFL Championship. The only step left to climb would have taken it to the Premier League, the most competitive and lucrative soccer league in the world.

"I don't know many sports stories that have this kind of arc and this kind of drama and with so much at stake. Not just for a club, but for the town that surrounds it," Reynolds said.

Season 5 follows that journey even though we already know how it ends, with Wrexham playing Middlesbrough to a draw on the final match day of the season, allowing Hull City, with a victory, to claim the final berth in a playoff where a Premier League spot awaits the winner.

On social media Reynolds wrote that he was "completely gutted" by the result. But perhaps he was looking at the wrong outcome.

Because when that game was over and the disappointed fans filed out of the stadium, many walked toward a city center now vibrant and busy; one featuring a community market, cultural space and an art gallery. Nearby there were new hubs for art, film and media, including a street-art trail and upcoming redevelopment of historic buildings.

There's hope and pride now in Wrexham, which is bidding to become the UK City of Culture 2029, which comes with more than $13 million for a yearlong series of events aimed at reinvigorating the town. And none of that was dampened by the score of a soccer match.

"That was by design - to infuse the club and the community and grow that," Reynolds said of he and his partner's aims. "And then when you grow that, the goal is always sustainability, to create a scenario in which the club can sustain itself.

"Nobody ever gets into this business thinking that they're going to turn a profit, or something like that."

But they can get into this business hoping to make a change. Reynolds and Mac accomplished that even if they're still stuck on a ladder one rung short of the Premier League.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week's episode of the "Corner of the Galaxy" podcast.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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This story was originally published May 12, 2026 at 4:17 AM.