These days, every sport aspires to succeed in America, from padel to cricket. While soccer is already a significant cultural force in the US, Major League Soccer (MLS) and the elite leagues in Europe—the English Premier League in particular—have been at the forefront of the sport’s infiltration of the nation’s consciousness. How can a club competing in the English Football League Two differentiate itself from the average US football fan? In a world of explosively hyped top-flight matches and future mega leagues, what place does a midweek cup match between Accrington Stanley and the Fulham Under-21s have?
A lower league team hoping to gain international recognition could consider being acquired by Hollywood celebrities and releasing a well-executed, multi-season documentary on a well-liked US cable network detailing the club’s journey up through the British football pyramid. Naturally, that is the approach that Wrexham famously took in order to grow its fan base among Americans; the third season of Welcome to Wrexham is scheduled to debut in the US on April 18. Now, the Welsh team, which is presently in third place in League Two and is owned by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, hopes to capitalise on its recent achievements to assist all 72 clubs in the English Football League’s three divisions in gaining a footing in the
Shaun Harvey, the former chief executive of the English Football League and director of Wrexham, says, “The US is always going to be massively important to the EFL, because there’s such a strong market and fanbase for football and the Premier League has already done the work to get a foothold there.” Harvey has also advised the club’s owners since 2021. “Clubs in the EFL now have the challenge of leveraging that relationship to grow their own fan bases in the United States.”
lower division English football, one of the several worldwide football leagues vying for attention in the US on a confusing patchwork of platforms and networks, is currently available to watch in the US via ESPN+ and iFollow, the EFL’s exclusive global streaming service. No sport enjoys having its broadcast rights distributed across several venues, and lower-league British football has found this disarray especially difficult as it tries to establish itself in the US.
Although Wrexham frequently brags that it has the largest international fan base of any EFL team—including historical English football heavyweights like Leeds United and Leicester City—it has only managed to hold onto a comparatively small number of subscribers for live broadcasts on iFollow in the United States. Harvey estimates that 5,000 families in the US have a yearly subscription to watch Wrexham games live. “That may not seem like much in isolation, but when compared to most other EFL clubs, it’s a huge amount.”
As the EFL negotiates a new foreign rights agreement, which will span from the upcoming season to 2027–2028, Harvey is adamant that at least a few lower-league games ought to be broadcast live and without charge in the United States. “Access is crucial,” he asserts. “From a marketing standpoint, the best rights contract is one that allows matches to be aired for free and accessible to everybody who wants to watch them, whether it is for the US or any other region. Combining free to air with a direct-to-consumer subscription channel makes sense since there is a balance to be struck between exposure and financial return.
Harvey refers to Welcome to Wrexham as “the club’s biggest commercial asset,” even though he won’t reveal the viewership figures that convinced FX to accept the documentary’s upcoming third season (“Viewing numbers are a closely guarded secret”). Unlike most lower league English football clubs, Wrexham can afford to prioritise free-to-air exposure over the guaranteed revenue that would come from restricting matches to cable or streaming services because of the visibility and global profile the documentary has given them. Harvey, though, thinks that other lower league teams may take a cue from Wrexham and come up with creative methods to differentiate themselves in a society that is overly focused on sports and sports-related “content.”
“Our documentary is about a football team that’s on a journey towards the top, not about telling the story of elite athletes in a pressure-filled scenario,” explains Harvey. Many, many individuals may identify with the story and what Wrexham and its supporters are going through in some way since they have experienced similar things in their own lives.
Undoubtedly, Wrexham’s ascent to worldwide prominence can be attributed primarily to its celebrity ownership. However, this control model appears to be at odds with the prevailing trend in European football, where professional clubs are increasingly being viewed less as the property of wealthy individuals and more as massive investment funds.
The spectacle of two wealthy North American dilettantes taking over the football team of a small former mining town and fully immersing themselves in the local community is almost charmingly nostalgic, especially in contrast to many of the high-profile Premier League clubs that are driven solely by the desire to maximise short-term gains and follow the dictates of sizable investment portfolios.
The documentary’s central themes and narratives—the town’s peculiarities and life, the team’s heroic struggle to advance through the EFL, the off-field personalities and on-field heroes—make Welcome to Wrexham a very different watch than, say, Apple TV+’s dreadfully dull recent series about Leo Messi’s arrival in Miami or Amazon’s All or Nothing series.
Harvey believes it’s the human scale of the documentary that has made it such a global success – “The town is the underdog in this story, more so than the football club” – and that the drama of promotion and relegation across the three tiers of the EFL, combined with lower league football’s mix of underdogs and fallen giants, can help British football below the Premier League carve out a meaningful cultural niche for itself in the US. Could the low-fi, everyday pleasures of lower league English football save the global institution of the fly-on-the-wall sports documentary from collapsing under the weight of its own importance?
Harvey’s portrayal of the story of lower league clubs is not only about football, but also about shifting demographics and urban renewal away from the UK’s central population centres. This story will resonate with any club, not just Wrexham.
The idealised future he envisions is one in which the EFL becomes more widely recognised among Americans as a counterbalance to the extravagant spending practices of elite football throughout Europe. It is seen as the opposite of the trends that have transformed elite football into a game of out-of-control salary inflation, blind faith in private equity, and persistent violations of financial fair play regulations. But crucially—some would even argue paradoxically—the EFL can only forge that identity at this point, given that the Premier League and other major football leagues have so solidly cemented their foothold in the US market.
According to Harvey, “it makes no sense for the EFL to compete with the Premier League for programme slots.” “We need to collaborate with the broadcasters who are airing Premier League matches and try to promote EFL matches using the same main hook that draws viewers to the station in the first place.”
Harvey refused to comment on whether it means Wrexham will back the EFL in negotiating a new rights agreement with NBC, the current US Premier League rights holder. However, clubs will need to use all the same marketing tools familiar to teams in the European elite, such as merchandise, social media campaigns, documentaries, and insider accounts, as English lower league football begins to seriously consider growing its international presence. However, they must also emphasise that they represent a version of the sport that is fundamentally very different from what viewers would know from living off of Man City vs. Newcastle and Champions League knockouts alone.
