Buying Wrexham A.F.C. is certainly an act of noblesse oblige on behalf of a community that hasn’t sipped from the chalice of globalization that’s enriched London or Los Angeles. It also provides the ultimate sim exercise: Take a fifth-tier Welsh soccer club and transform it into a profitable competitive endeavor with global appeal. Ready, go. That entrepreneurial component certainly appeals to Reynolds, who has enjoyed his ventures into mobile technology — he has a substantial stake in Mint Mobile — and artisanal spirits (Aviation American Gin). There’s also a degree of vanity in the exclusivity that accompanies owning a sports team, something few humans on Earth have the wherewithal to do.
Owning a football club allows those owners to exist vicariously through professional athletes. When McElhenney and Reynolds live and die with every attacking run, diving save and set piece when Wrexham take the pitch at the crack of dawn on Saturdays, Los Angeles time, they’re more aligned with the denizens of Wrexham, their adopted home — than with Philadelphia.
