Sports documentaries used to be a reward handed out after the fact, once the trophy was safely in the cabinet and everyone involved had agreed on the story. Welcome to Wrexham did the opposite. It pointed the cameras at a Welsh fifth-tier club playing its games in England before anyone knew whether the experiment would work, then let the world watch two Hollywood actors learn the hard way what running a football club actually involves.

The result has become one of the most watched sports series on the planet and it has dragged a small North Wales city along with it. So how did a club playing non-league football in front of a few thousand people end up as a Disney+ flagship show, and does the money everyone assumes is sloshing about because of it actually reach Wrexham the football club at all?

Image: Jaggery / Welcome to Wrexham County Borough

What is Welcome to Wrexham About?

The Welcome to Wrexham series follows Rob McElhenney, of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame, and Ryan Reynolds, the actor arguably most famous for his depiction of Marvel’s Deadpool, as they take over Wrexham AFC, the third-oldest professional football club in the world, and try to turn it into an underdog story worth rooting for.

Each run of episodes covers a single football season, filming the players, the manager, the boardroom and the supporters as the club climbs the English football pyramid.

Welcome to Wrexham lands four Emmy nominations as remarkable awards story continues 🔴⚪ #WxmAFC #WrexhamAFC
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— Wrexham Reds (@wrexhamreds.com) 15:59 · Jul 9, 2026

What sets it apart from just being a highlights package is that it spends as much time in the town as it does on the pitch. The Turf pub, the food bank, the local schools and the fans who followed the club through fifteen years of non-league football all get their turn on camera.

The football is the spine of it all, but the documentary is really about a working-class city being handed an improbable second act.

Welcome to Wrexham: The Key Facts

The essentials for a UK viewer, correct at the time of writing, are set out below.

• Format: Documentary series
• Genre: Sport, reality
• First released: The August of 2022, on FX in the United States, with UK viewers getting it on Disney+ shortly after
• Seasons: Five at the time of writing
• Episodes: 57 across the five seasons, running 18, 15, 8, 8 and 8
• Episode length: Roughly 25 to 50 minutes, longer in the later seasons
• Watch in the UK: Streaming exclusively on Disney+, with a subscription required
• Made by: Boardwalk Pictures, Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort, Rob McElhenney’s More Better Productions and 3 Arts Entertainment, for FX
• Awards: Five Emmy Awards at the Creative Arts Emmys in the January of 2024, with further nominations since
• Content: Frequent strong language, meaning it sits behind Disney+’s mature-content controls
• Subject: Wrexham AFC’s rise from the National League towards the Premier League under Reynolds and McElhenney

The one figure worth mentioning is the episode count, which has settled down over time. The first two seasons were sprawling affairs, but the show has since found its shape at eight episodes a year, being much tighter in approach.

How Did Two Hollywood Actors End Up Owning Wrexham?

The takeover is effectively the pilot episode of the TV series. Rob McElhenney had been looking for a club to buy during the pandemic and was nudged towards Wrexham by the British writer and comedian Humphrey Ker. He then brought in Reynolds, whom he barely knew at the time, as his partner, believing that he needed ‘Hollywood money’ to make it work.

In the November of 2020, members of the Wrexham Supporters Trust, who had owned the club since 2011, voted to accept the bid, with 98.6% in favour.

The deal was completed on the ninth of February 2021 for a reported £2 million, alongside a commitment to invest in the club’s infrastructure. Wrexham were a fifth-tier side who had spent fifteen years outside the Football League at the time. Neither owner had run a football club, neither had any obvious connection to North Wales and that gap between Hollywood and the National League is exactly what the cameras were there to capture.

Who Actually Pays for the Show, and Do Wrexham Earn From It?

This is the part most people get wrong. Welcome to Wrexham is made for FX, the American network owned by Disney, and produced by the likes of Boardwalk Pictures alongside the owners’ own companies. FX commissions and funds the series, and it streams on Disney+ around the world and on Hulu in the United States. The club is the subject, not the broadcaster.

Crucially, Wrexham do not earn directly from the documentary. The club has said as much itself, describing the series in its own accounts as delivering no direct financial return whilst giving it ‘a marketing platform that can be monetised through the delivery of TV exposure for our partners.’ In plain terms, the show does not write the club a cheque. What it does do is turn a non-league side into a global brand in a way that is normally reserved for the best Premier League teams, with the money arriving through the side doors of sponsorship, shirt sales and commercial deals.

The numbers bear that out. Wrexham reported record turnover of £26.7 million in their 2023-2024 accounts, which is a figure that the club credited in large part to the exposure the documentary brought, with sponsorship income rising sharply on the back of it. The series is the shop window, whilst the revenue is everything the window persuades people to buy.

Why Has Welcome to Wrexham Been Such a Success?

The obvious answer to why the TV show has become such a runaway success is the two famous names involved in the takeover, but that only explains why people pressed play the first time. What kept them watching was a combination of jeopardy and the real characters involved.

Unlike most sports documentaries, this one was filmed without knowing the ending, so the promotions, the near-misses and the injuries all played out in real time, rather than being tidied up in hindsight.

The show has also understood that the football was only half the appeal. The series gives as much room to the supporters and the town of Wrexham as it does to the players, so the audience ends up invested in Wayne Jones behind the bar at The Turf as much as the scoreline.

Add the timing, arriving whilst streaming services were desperate for feel-good originals, and a genuine sporting fairytale in the form of three consecutive promotions and the thing more or less sold itself.

The Seasons So Far

Five seasons have aired at the time of writing, with each being built around a single campaign.

Season one, released in the August of 2022, covered the first full year under the new owners and ended in play-off heartbreak in the National League.

Season two, from the September of 2023, told the story of the 2022-2023 title win and promotion back to the Football League after fifteen years away, with Paul Mullin seemingly scoring goals for fun.

Season three followed the 2023-2024 promotion out of League Two, whilst season four, from the May of 2025, covered the historic third successive promotion into the Championship.

Season five, which reached Disney+ in the United Kingdom in the May of 2026, follows the club’s first season in the second tier since 1982, combined with the women’s team’s first league title.

The later seasons are shorter and slicker, settling at eight episodes each after the eighteen and fifteen of the first two.

Memorable Moments

For a series about a small club, it has produced a remarkable run of set-piece moments. Ben Foster, the former England goalkeeper coaxed out of retirement, saved a stoppage-time penalty against Notts County in the April of 2023 to keep Wrexham top of the National League in a 3-2 win, which was a save that has since been watched by millions who have never even been near the Racecourse.

There was darkness too. Paul Mullin suffered a punctured lung after a collision with Manchester United’s goalkeeper in a pre-season friendly in the summer of 2023, filmed in unflinching detail.

On the brighter side, there was the National League title, which was clinched in front of a heaving Racecourse, the promotion sealed with a 3-0 win over Charlton in the May of 2025 and, in the March of 2026, Wrexham’s women lifting their first Adran Premier title with a 4-1 win over Cardiff City, Katie Barker helping herself to a hat-trick.

The Accidental Celebrities

One of the pleasures of the series is the way it has made stars of people who never asked for it. Chief amongst them is Wayne Jones, the landlord of The Turf, which is the pub that sits so close to the Racecourse it is practically part of the ground. Jones and his pub feature so heavily that The Turf has become a tourist destination in its own right, second only to the stadium on the list of places visitors want to see in Wrexham, being busy enough on match days to occasionally drink itself dry.

He is not alone. The documentary has turned lifelong fans, club staff and ordinary regulars into recognisable faces and it handed the women’s team a national profile it had never previously enjoyed. Humphrey Ker, the comedian who first pointed McElhenney towards Wrexham, has become an on-screen fixture as a club director.

The knack of the format is that it treats the person pulling pints and the club captain with exactly the same curiosity.

A Welcome to Wrexham Timeline

The rise has been quick enough that it helps to lay it out in order:

• The November of 2020: Wrexham Supporters Trust members vote to accept the takeover, 98.6% in favour.
• The 9th of February 2021: Reynolds and McElhenney complete their purchase for a reported £2 million.
• The August of 2022: Welcome to Wrexham season one premieres on FX.
• The April of 2023: Wrexham win the National League and return to the Football League after 15 years, taking in Ben Foster’s penalty save and Paul Mullin’s goal haul along the way.
• The January of 2024: The series wins five Emmy Awards at the Creative Arts Emmys.
• 2024: Promotion out of League Two, a second successive step up.
• The May of 2025: A third straight promotion, into the Championship, sealed with a 3-0 win over Charlton, as season four airs.
• The March of 2026: Wrexham’s women win their first Adran Premier title.
• The April of 2026: FX renews the series through an eighth season.
• The May of 2026: Season five premieres, covering the club’s first Championship campaign since 1982.

That is a lot of ground for a club that was non-league when the cameras first arrived.

What Comes Next?

With the series commissioned through an eighth season and a spin-off following Reynolds and McElhenney’s Mexican side Necaxa already in the works, Welcome to Wrexham is not slowing down. The bigger question is what happens if the football stops cooperating.

QUE?! 👀

Actors and Wrexham owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have purchased a stake in Liga MX club Necaxa 🇲🇽⚡️

The report says the partnership could include a series about the club similar to Welcome to Wrexham 🎥 pic.twitter.com/P8XVfLRskN

— Garcia (@GFCards) April 29, 2024

A documentary built on three consecutive promotions needs a fourth act, with the Championship being a far less forgiving stage than the National League.

Regardless of whether the next chapter is a march on the Premier League or a hard lesson in the second tier, the cameras will be there for it either way.