The managing director of League Two team Wrexham has stated that the club has suffered “hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses” due to a “ambitious” renovation of their current stadium.
Following their takeover of the team in February 2021 by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, the Red Dragons have seen a meteoric ascent on and off the field.
The team led by Phil Parkinson was promoted to League Two after winning the National League the previous year.
The new owners have made free transfer signings of former Sunderland star Steven Fletcher and former Wigan and Sunderland midfielder James McClean, as well as a number of high-profile players from the leagues above, notably Andy Cannon, a midfielder for Hull and Rochdale.
Due to all of that, Wrexham is once again contending at the top of the table this season and drawing sizable audiences as their profile increases globally.
According to worldfootball.net, they have drawn an average of 10,270 spectators to the Racecourse Ground this League Two season, which is fewer than that of Notts County and former Premier League team Bradford City.
This indicates that the team is using more than 95% of the stadium, which can accommodate 10,771 spectators in its original configuration.
Due to this, the leadership decided to establish a temporary stand at the Racecourse Ground, which some may consider a hazardous move.
Although it would cost them a “ton of money,” executive director Humphrey Ker told The Athletic that Wrexham will gain from the choice, which may be fairly unusual for a fourth level team.
He clarified, saying, “The amount of interest that comes from outside sources and from people who would normally never give the slightest attention to football has put us in this extraordinary situation of being a genuinely unique club in world football. To be honest, that gives you access to a tremendous amount of money, which empowers you to be bold and expansive—and do things like erect the makeshift stand at the Kop End.
“There is probably no other club in the country who could go, ‘Yeah, we’ll lose a tonne of money doing what is, on a business level, a pretty stupid thing to do, but let’s do it anyway because we can get more people into the stadium’.”
