Is the Wrexham “fairytale” good or bad for football?

Accrington Stanley owner Andy Holt's tweet was dripping with Lancastrian sarcasm.

“Congratulations Ryan, I honestly don’t know how you do it! Fabulous performance. Good luck with the triple,” they said.

He was responding to Wrexham co-owner Ryan Reynolds' celebratory post following his side's second successive promotion.

Holt is considered one of English football's most fascinating characters, dividing about as much disagreement because the team on the receiving end of his post. Wrexham is the Marmite club of British football – other teams' fans adore it or hate it – and after promotion to League One alongside Stockport County last weekend, the talk has returned with renewed vigor.

Congratulations Ryan, I truthfully don't know the way you do it! Fabulous performance 👏👏👏

Good luck with the triple ❤️👍 https://t.co/IidWw4KeX0

– Andyh (@AndyhHolt) April 14, 2024

Holt, an area businessman who made his fortune within the plastics industry and has invested heavily in his hometown club since taking control in 2015, may be forgiven for his tongue-in-cheek response to Reynolds. It was each a congratulation and an exquisitely ironic tribute to Wrexham's achievements, given the sizeable budget for a fourth-tier club.

There can also be the undeniable fact that Holt has an in depth relationship with Reynolds and Wrexham's other Hollywood star co-owner Rob McElhenney. They didn't all the time agree on topics comparable to streaming revenue and ticket prices. Maybe there's something to be said for taking an ethical stance in times like these, taking a deep breath and rising above it. But that is football – an industry that thrives on petty grudges.

Most neutrals are self-aware enough to confess a level of jealousy when they appear at what Wrexham have achieved since Reynolds and McElhenney took over in 2021.

Aside from the investment, international exposure and the apparent respect each have for the North Wales club and town they represent, it's annoyingly difficult to not just like the actors. Their confident jokes, like once they tried to learn Welsh within the documentary series Welcome To Wrexham, and their funny social media posts making it much harder to be cynical about their intentions.

They are publicly available in a way that enables for accountability, bucking the flow of too many absent or elusive owners within the EFL. They have shown a touch of sophistication through memorials to the Gresford Colliery mining disaster, surprise charitable donations and fan engagement. New big-name international sponsors comparable to Expedia, TikTok and United Airlines have joined, together with big plans for brand spanking new stands on the racecourse site. And on the pitch they’d clear success. Manager Phil Parkinson delivered a record-breaking points haul last season en path to winning the National League title and pushed Wrexham out of the fifth tier of the English football pyramid after 15 years.

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Fan culture continues in Europe and the USA

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And now they’ve done it again, achieving back-to-back promotions for the primary time within the club's 160-year history, again with the Welcome To Wrexham cameras in tow. The series brought recent fans and a spotlight to the EFL, particularly from the USA. This has, partly, led to record domestic and international television contracts – value £935 million ($1.2 billion) over five years and £148 million over 4 years for EFL, respectively.

So what's not to love? What damage is the Wrexham story doing to football?

If you ask most other fans in England and Wales, quite a bit. This is where the bubble bursts should you think Wrexham is a story that defies all odds.

Wrexham aren’t any outsiders, not less than not within the league. In their FA Cup appearances, by which they faced Blackburn Rovers, Sheffield United and Coventry City, there are arguments in favor of underdog status. In the last two seasons they played three teams much higher up the domestic football pyramid. But when a team has probably the most money within the division, it has a bonus over the remainder. Wrexham usually are not the primary club to make use of their financial strength to achieve promotion within the league. They won't be the last.

Stockport have enjoyed the same promotion from the National League and boast considered one of the best wage bills in League Two this season. Fleetwood Town, now a longtime league club, did the identical in 2012 and 2014. This season's National League champions, Chesterfield, spent heavily to achieve promotion back to the EFL.

Wrexham's latest accounts for the 2022-23 season show wage costs amounted to £6.9m, with losses of £5.1m. Both figures were 1) records for the National League and a couple of) higher than all League Two teams this season and in addition most League One teams. That's an unprecedented sum of money to spend within the lower leagues and, for comparison, Accrington lost £785,000 in the identical period once they were still playing within the third tier.

There's no shame in spending big, especially when it really works and the revenue is as high as Wrexham's last 12 months (£10.5m – again greater than some other team within the fifth-tier National League or League Two). More money helps attract higher players, and due to this fact the rankings often reflect each team's spending. Only when a club endures a poor season or begins to feel the restrictions of the EFL's Financial Fair Play rules (normally once they reach the Second Division Championship) is there cause for concern.

While Wrexham have done loads of good for football, the gradual increase in wages within the lower divisions poses a major problem for clubs who depend on significantly smaller margins but try to maintain up.

Wrexham's financial clout and subsequent easy promotion straight to League Two was to be expected, and we probably won't see what that type of growth really means until they reach the Championship – or their owners run out of cash or enthusiasm for the project means. The reports are clear evidence: Wrexham is an excellent story, but not a fairy tale. This clip on CBS and the responses perfectly sum up how divisive they’ve turn out to be.

“Wrexham and their TV show do as much for soccer in America as MLS does right now.” 🏴xnxxthird-party

A (now) third tier North Wales football club has achieved two consecutive promotions and the Morning Footy crew couldn't be happier 👏 pic.twitter.com/bFIy6G3Prq

— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) April 15, 2024

What angers so many League One and Two and National League fans is that, while the story of a post-industrial city that has fallen on hard times with an underperforming/downtrodden football club has attracted global attention, it has spread to much of the world refers back to the EFL. You could swap Wrexham for Grimsby Town, Wigan Athletic, Hartlepool United, Newport County or Accrington. None of those clubs mean less to their community simply because there aren’t any television cameras to point out it.

Perhaps this all says more about fan culture within the UK than we would love to confess.

The healthy position in all of that is to take a seat somewhere in the center. Any moment of admiration for what Wrexham does, a touch of awareness of the wage bill or a touch of cynicism surrounding the narrative that they’re “the only club of their kind in the world” should provide a superbly seasoned outlook.

But balance? A healthy attitude towards what other teams in your division are doing? Is there anything aside from contempt for brand spanking new ideas, recent fans and a flood of media attention for a club aside from your personal? You won't find that within the EFL. Try Disney+ as an alternative.