Welcome to Wrexham: A Hollywood Story of Football (Soccer) Success with Shaun Harvey, Advisor to the Board at Wrexham AFC

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast and Welcome to Wrexham.

On today’s show, we go to Wrexham, the town in North Wales that has become a football (soccer) mecca due to a blend of its rich history as home to the 3rd oldest club in the world and a recent injection of Hollywood with Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying the club.

We talk with Shaun Harvey, the Advisor to the Board at Wrexham AFC, and a highly experienced football club and league CEO to discuss how teams can have success on and off the pitch.

Shaun is the CEO of Wantaway Limited, where he advises football clubs, organizing bodies, and companies on all things related to the business of football. His current clients include Wrexham AFC, FIFA, Inner Circle Sports, and Macron.

He’s taken his experiences as the MD at Bradford City FC, which he led to Premier League promotion, the CEO at Leeds United, and the CEO of the English Football League to Wrexham AFC, where he and the team are working to secure promotion back into the Football League and bringing a successful club back to the town of Wrexham.

And they are well on their way to building a global brand in a number of respects – they are performing well on the pitch, they have created a show, Welcome to Wrexham, that has been a hit on Hulu, and their recent FA Cup home match vs Sheffield United was the most followed soccer game across ESPN’s website and digital platforms in the US.

Shaun and I had a fascinating discussion. We talked about:

• How clubs balance on the field performance and off the field business success in a world where the evolution of entertainment and social media have turbocharged the concept of monetizing engagement.
• How important it is to think about the community when investing in a sports team
• Why Shaun believes “the Wrexham effect” has been a huge driver of success for their club.
• How lifting up a club financially and on the pitch can create tremendous economic and social benefits for the town that they play in.

Thanks Shaun for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to welcome us to Wrexham - and share why this is such an exciting and impactful project that we can all learn from.

It’s always sunny in Wrexham.

Thanks Steve Horowitz at Inner Circle Sports for the kind introduction to Shaun to make this episode possible.