Updated:
Jul 1, 2023 8:21 pm
Hollywood stars and Wrexham AFC owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have joined a consortium of investors taking a 24% equity stake in the Formula One team Alpine.
Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi said: “This association is an important step to enhance our performance at all levels. First, Otro Capital, RedBird Capital Partners and Maximum Effort Investments, as international players with strong track records in the sports industry, will bring their recognised expertise to boost our media and marketing strategy to support our sporting performance over the long term.”
What does this mean for Alpine?
Let’s take a look at Wrexham AFC, a small club owned by 2000 supporters who met with Reynolds and McElhenney in 2020. They made an offer, despite having no prior knowledge of the club and where it’s based and agreed to invest £2m ($2.5m) and signed a 25-year stadium lease as a promise to the fans that they wouldn’t move the club.
During their ownership, a “Welcome to Wrexham” docuseries was made which followed the events that occurred since purchasing the club and the teams’ journey. After the show’s debut in August, “Welcome to Wrexham” received a 97% audience, was immediately signed for a second season and made roughly £2.57m.
Wrexham AFC signed kit sponsorship deals with several companies, the latest being United Airlines (a company valued at £13bn).
Shortly after Reynolds and McElhenney bought Wrexham AFC in 2021, the club won the National League and was promoted back into the EFL after 15 years. Following the takeover Wrexham’s socials have skyrocketed, at the time of writing this article Wrexham AFC has 532.8k followers on Twitter, 979k on Instagram, 261k on Facebook and 1.4m on TikTok.
Not only have they gained a huge following on social media, but supporter turnout at the stadium surpassed last year’s amount of 5,892 (from its original 2,609) and they now have 7,150 season-ticket holders – which was capped in order for fans to be able to buy tickets on a match-by-match basis.
Reynolds already has an impressive track record in terms of investments across a range of businesses, from Aviation American Gin to service provider Mint Mobile and he is hoping to do the same with Alpine. Esteban Ocon certainly believes that the overall investment of $218m would greatly benefit the team and help them become a regular F1 race-winning team. He hopes that Reynolds’ successes with Wrexham and other businesses will rub off on the Alpine team.
In 2021 when Alpine was rebranded by Renault the team achieved one victory and three podium finishes. In the Canadian GP Ocon finished eighth and his teammate Pierre Gasly finished 12th. In the Drivers’ championship Ocon currently stands ninth (on 31 points) and Gasly is one behind in tenth (on 15 points).
Ocon said: “I think it’s fantastic. He’s someone that is very inspiring in what he does, also outside his acting world, he’s an extremely talented businessman as well.
“I think all what Ryan has done recently, his company has been extremely successful. There hasn’t been any failures that I know. I think that he’s a very good asset, him and his team behind, to our team.”
