Five Years of Deadpool FC: The Number That Explains Why Wrexham’s Rise Will Never Be Repeated
Ben Foster said something last weekend that deserves to be pulled apart. Speaking to the Press Association on the fifth anniversary of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s takeover, the former England goalkeeper declared: “It will never be done again.” Three promotions from the National League to the Championship playoff places. A Welsh club older than the Football Association itself, reborn as a global brand worth an estimated £350 million.
Foster is almost certainly right. But why?
Not because of the money – Birmingham City’s owners have spent more. Not because of the documentary – Sunderland ‘Til I Die came first. The answer lives in a ratio that I’ve been tracking across celebrity-owned football clubs for the past eighteen months, and it explains both Wrexham’s impossibility and its fragility heading into the business end of this Championship season.
The ratio nobody’s talking about
Call it the Hollywood Acceleration Index (HAI): commercial revenue growth divided by on-pitch tier progression, measured per ownership year.
HAI = (Commercial Revenue Growth %) ÷ (League Tiers Climbed × Years of Ownership)
Here’s what the numbers look like across the celebrity-ownership landscape:
| Club | Owners | Tiers Climbed | Years | Commercial Growth | HAI |
| Wrexham | Reynolds & McElhenney | 3 | 5 | ~600% | 40.0 |
| Salford City | Class of ’92 | 2 | 10 | ~180% | 9.0 |
| Como 1907 | Robert Platek | 2 | 4 | ~150% | 18.8 |
| Birmingham City | Tom Wagner / Knighthead | 1 | 3 | ~90% | 30.0 |
Wrexham’s HAI of 40.0 isn’t just the highest – it’s more than double the next closest. And the key driver isn’t matchday income (£5 million in FY2024) or even TV money (Championship clubs net roughly £9 million). It’s that commercial revenue figure: £13.2 million in the year ending June 2024, up from £1.9 million twelve months earlier. A 600% year-on-year explosion. Nearly half of it generated outside the United Kingdom.
I pulled the club’s financial filings on a Wednesday afternoon in late January. Record turnover of £26.7 million for FY2024. A 155% increase on the previous year. The £15 million loan from Reynolds and McElhenney’s Delaware-registered holding company – repaid in full. And then, in December 2025, the institutional validation: Apollo Sports Capital, a fund managed by a firm overseeing approximately $840 billion in assets, acquiring a minority stake at a reported £350 million pre-money valuation.
From £2 million purchase price to £350 million valuation. That’s a 175x return in under five years. For context, the FTSE 100 returned approximately 35% over the same period.
What Saturday night felt like
I want to put a timestamp on the current tension. At 5:02 PM on Saturday 7 February, Max Cleworth turned a Femi Azeez cross into his own net at the STōK Cae Ras. By 5:37 PM, Josh Coburn had smashed home a second for Millwall. Final score: Wrexham 0–2 Millwall. Ryan Reynolds was in the stands. Attendance: 10,663.
The loss kept Wrexham sixth on 47 points – technically still in the playoff places, but now six points behind the very team that had just beaten them. And it exposed something that the HAI doesn’t capture: at Championship level, commercial revenue can’t outrun squad depth.
Phil Parkinson fielded a side missing Zak Vyner, Lewis Brunt, Aaron James, Danny Ward, and Liberato Cacace. Five senior players. In the National League, Wrexham could absorb that kind of casualty list. In a division where Coventry City sit top with 59 points from 31 games, every injury compounds.
Where Wrexham sit right now (Championship, 11 Feb 2026):
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | GD | Pts |
| 1 | Coventry City | 31 | 17 | 8 | 6 | +28 | 59 |
| 3 | Ipswich Town | 30 | 15 | 9 | 6 | +22 | 54 |
| 5 | Millwall | 31 | 15 | 8 | 8 | +3 | 53 |
| 6 | Wrexham | 31 | 12 | 11 | 8 | +5 | 47 |
| 7 | Preston NE | 31 | 12 | 11 | 8 | +4 | 47 |
Goal difference is all that separates Wrexham from seventh. Bristol City and Watford, both on 46, have games in hand.
The Mullin question nobody wants to ask
Here’s where I break from the narrative. Every outlet covering the five-year anniversary ran the Disney version: three promotions, Hollywood glamour, community transformation, Freedom of Wrexham. All true. But the counter-narrative matters.
Paul Mullin scored 110 goals in 172 appearances for this club. He was the protagonist of the first two seasons of Welcome to Wrexham. Two weeks ago, he was loaned to Bradford City – his second temporary move of the season after Wigan recalled him in January. Speaking to the press, Mullin didn’t hide his feelings: he found the situation difficult to accept and described the way things ended as tough.
The point isn’t whether Parkinson was right to move Mullin on – Kieffer Moore has 10 Championship goals this season, and the squad needed upgrading. The point is that Wrexham’s Hollywood model requires a specific kind of ruthlessness that the documentary doesn’t show. James McClean, another fan favourite, also departed in January. The club that built its brand on community warmth is now making the cold calculations that every promotion-chasing Championship side must make.
This is the tension at the heart of the Wrexham story in February 2026: the HAI that powered them here demands constant commercial growth, and constant commercial growth requires constant on-pitch success, which requires constant squad investment, which requires letting go of the players who made the story worth telling.
What the experts can’t agree on
There’s a genuine split among football finance analysts about whether Wrexham’s model is sustainable at Premier League level.
The bull case, articulated in several recent analyses of the Apollo deal, argues that Wrexham has cracked “emotional equity” – converting cultural relevance into commercial revenue at a scale that makes league placement almost secondary. The Dallas Cowboys comparison keeps surfacing: you don’t need to win the Super Bowl to be the most valuable franchise in sport.
The bear case, which you’ll hear from Championship-focused analysts and EFL insiders, focuses on a simpler number: the wage-to-revenue ratio. Championship sides typically spend 80–100% of revenue on wages. Wrexham’s squad costs have escalated sharply with each promotion. A Premier League campaign would demand wage commitments of £80–100 million annually. The Racecourse Ground seats 13,341. The planned expansion to 55,000 is years away. If promotion arrives before the infrastructure catches up, Wrexham could find themselves bleeding cash faster than the commercial model can replenish it.
Friday’s fork in the road
On Friday 13 February at 7:45 PM, Wrexham host Ipswich Town in the FA Cup fourth round. Then they face the same Ipswich at the same ground in the league on 22 February. Two matches against a side sitting third in the Championship, four points and seven places above them in the table.
Here’s your reader homework: check the Championship table at 10 PM on Saturday 22 February, after both matches are done. If Wrexham have taken four or more points from these two fixtures – including an FA Cup progression – they’ll be genuine contenders for a playoff run through May. If they take one point or fewer, the injury crisis will have bitten hard enough to shift conversations from “when” they reach the Premier League to “whether this season.”
🗳️ POLL: Will Wrexham reach the Premier League?
Cast your vote:
- By May 2026 (this season, via playoffs)
- By 2027–28 (within Reynolds & McElhenney’s stated target window)
- Eventually, but 2029 or later
- Never – the Championship ceiling is real
📊 COMPARE YOUR CLUB: Five-Year Trajectory Calculator
Take any club relegated to or stuck in the fifth tier in 2021. How does their trajectory compare?
- How many league tiers has your club climbed since 2021? ___
- Estimate your club’s commercial revenue growth over five years (%). ___
- Calculate your club’s HAI: (Answer 2) ÷ (Answer 1 × 5) = ___
Wrexham’s benchmark HAI: 40.0. If your club’s number is above 20, you’re in rare territory. Above 10 is strong. Below 5 is typical.
⏳ TIMELINE TEST: Where Were They?
Match each year to Wrexham’s league position – no checking first:
| Year | Your Answer | Actual |
| 2020–21 | ___ | National League (5th tier) |
| 2021–22 | ___ | National League (5th tier) |
| 2022–23 | ___ | National League → League Two (promoted) |
| 2023–24 | ___ | League Two → League One (promoted) |
| 2024–25 | ___ | League One → Championship (promoted) |
| 2025–26 | ___ | Championship, 6th (playoff places) |
If you got all six right without checking, you’ve been paying closer attention than most Premier League club boards. The point: this trajectory doesn’t fit any existing model. Foster’s right. It won’t happen again – unless someone finds a way to manufacture a HAI above 40 without Ryan Reynolds.
My prediction
Wrexham finish between 5th and 8th this season. They reach the playoffs but fall in the semi-finals – the squad depth gap between them and the top four is currently 6–12 points, and the injury list is too long to close it. The fourth promotion comes in 2026–27, when the Racecourse expansion reaches phase one (around 20,000 capacity), the Apollo capital fully deploys, and a summer window without promotion pressure allows Parkinson – or his successor – to build rather than patch.
The Hollywood ending arrives. Just not this May.
