In Exeter, a match to point out how Reynolds and McElhenney have supercharged Wrexham’s rise | USAEMALL.com

At the end of a week when the true impact of Hollywood coming to Wrexham was laid bare by a balance sheet containing almost as many new records as music store HMV, it felt appropriate that the Welsh club should make the long trip to Exeter City.

The Devon club are in their 21st season of fan ownership, the same model that kept Wrexham afloat for more than a decade before Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney rode into town.

Like Saturday’s 2-0 victors, Exeter had a stint in the National League — five years in their case, between 2003 and 2008 — after being taken to the brink of financial ruin by previous owners.

Today, though, the Devon club is rightly considered one of the best-run in the EFL, making the most of limited resources to establish themselves as a League One outfit. Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson is certainly a fan.

“This is a good club and it’s total respect over the job they’ve done,” he says. “I love their story with the fan-owned situation and how, like ourselves, this club has had tough times but kept themselves going.”

Exeter’s mid-table standing these past three years is no mean feat in a division that has seen them go up against some relative behemoths, with Birmingham City the latest member of the Premier League alumni to visit St James Park after Sheffield Wednesday, Derby County, Ipswich Town and Portsmouth had all made the trip to the south west.

Wrexham may never have played higher than the second tier in their history, but this week’s revelation about the huge £26.7million turnover generated by last season’s League Two promotion at the STōK Cae Ras means they can be added to any list of League One clubs with exceptional financial muscle.

To put that figure — which is likely to have risen slightly for the current campaign — into context, Portsmouth, champions of this division in 2023-24, raked in £13.6m over the same financial period and runners-up Derby £19.4m.

Exeter’s accounts for the last full financial year are not yet available, but in 2022-23, annual turnover at St James Park stood at £5.8m, including £1.39m in transfer revenue. A profit of £312,000 was made in a season when the club finished 14th in League One.

Such prudency, and in particular the nurturing of young talent to sell on for profit, has characterised this era of fan ownership at St James Park. In the absence of a major benefactor, it has had to.

Sell-on clauses are particularly important, providing Exeter with timely windfalls on top of the initial fees paid for the likes of Ollie Watkins and Ethan Ampadu, sold to Brentford and Chelsea respectively in 2017.

Just two summers ago, Ampadu’s switch from Stamford Bridge to Leeds United earned his boyhood club more than £1m. Jay Stansfield’s move from Fulham to Birmingham City also proved lucrative, with the sell-on clause in his 2019 transfer to Craven Cottage expected to bring in a further £2m.

Not so long ago, a similar level of husbandry seemed to be Wrexham’s only hope of a brighter future after years of mismanagement and poor decision-making had culminated in the fans riding to the rescue in 2011.

For the next decade, the supporters’ trust ran the show with the backing of around 4,000 members paying their annual subs.

On-field success proved just out of reach, Wrexham bagging 98 points in 2011-12, only to be pipped to the Conference title by Fleetwood Town and then losing to Newport County 12 months later in the play-off final. The irony of Fleetwood and, to a lesser extent, Newport both benefiting from a rich backer was lost on no one.

Off the field, however, the trust transformed a club initially losing £750,000 per year to one that was debt-free and had cash in the bank when bought by Reynolds and McElhenney in February 2021.

Once Hollywood had arrived in north Wales, spending restraints went out of the window as the new owners attempted to turbo-charge an escape from non-League via a series of loans.

This ambition remained once back in the EFL, albeit — as the latest set of accounts reveal — with Wrexham now being run along more sustainable lines.

An £11m wage bill in 2023-24 may be beyond the comprehension of not only last year’s League Two clubs, but also most of Wrexham’s divisional peers this time around.

But it was made possible by that record-breaking turnover of £26.7m, raised in part by a seven-fold increase in sponsorship income to £13.1m, plus other substantial boosts to matchday and retail receipts.

This new-found sustainability on the back of such huge income levels also brings one very big benefit. Namely, how Wrexham — unlike others in League One, whose business model relies largely on selling players — can hang on to their best talent with a view to pushing even further up the leagues.

The performances of Max Cleworth and Arthur Okonkwo at this level have not gone unnoticed. The duo being calmness personified in the comfortable win over Gary Caldwell’s side will only have sharpened that interest.

Likewise how Sam Smith, Ollie Rathbone (who scored the game’s opener on Saturday), Ryan Longman, Lewis Brunt and George Dobson — all signed in the past 12 months amid a notable shift in recruitment policy that has started to bring the average age down and give the side more mobility — once again underlined their contribution to the promotion push.

The vast financial resources that have allowed Parkinson to recruit such talent mean there’s no real ceiling to how far the Welsh club can go. Unlike, perhaps, Exeter, due to the limitations of a fan-run setup that inevitably go with the commendable aspects, which on Saturday included a team of volunteers clearing rubbish from the stands within 15 minutes of the final whistle.

Wrexham are not fully there on the sustainability front. They did lose £2.7m in 2023-24 and a similar deficit is forecast for this season.

But, after all those years in north Wales of trying to make every pound do the work of a fiver as the supporters’ trust commendably kept the lights on, the time really has arrived for Wrexham to dream big.

(Top photo: Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)