28 December 2023 , 16:33
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The executive director of Wrexham AFC has opened up on how much money the club lost after taking a risk that did not pay off.
In February 2021, Humphrey Ker began his role at the club following the takeover by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. The 41-year-old works with board advisors as the acting duo’s voice on the ground at the Welsh club. The team is far superior to their League Two counterparts from a financial standpoint in large part due to the success of the hit Netflix ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ documentary series.
Their revenue in the current financial year is expected to hit £20 million ($26m), however, they are set to lose £250,000 after opening a temporary stand at the STōK Cae Ras. “Rob and Ryan are definitely loving it as much as ever,” Ker told The Athletic. “To me, that’s because the way we are doing football club ownership is in an extremely fun way.
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“Yes, it comes with a huge amount of responsibility and pressure, plus all the other things that come with being the custodians of this historic club. But we are also in this extraordinary position of being a genuinely unique club in world football because of the level of interest that comes from outside sources and from people who would usually never pay the slightest attention to football.
“That arms you with an incredible level of resources, frankly, and allows you to be ambitious and expansive — and do things like building the temporary 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’.”
Wrexham are going to build a new Kop stand, but it has since been announced it will not be ready for the start of the 2024-25 season.
Just before Christmas, the club erected a temporary stand as a means of increasing the stadium capacity due to delays with the new stand. The extra tickets are selling fast and this it likely remain the case until the end of the season, such is the demand to watch Phil Parkinson’s promotion chasers.
Despite the funds made from the increased ticket sales, the club’s financial projections indicate that the revenue will still not cover the initial outlay and running costs. However, due to some of the club’s lucrative financial deals, they were able to survive the financial loss, where other teams in the league would have been impacted significantly.
Wrexham built a temporary stand as they wait for their new one to be erected (Paul Greenwood/REX/Shutterstock)February will mark three years since Humphrey joined the Reynolds and McElhenney at Wrexham, and it has been a very successful period. Last season Wrexham won the National League to secure promotion to League Two and are currently second in English football’s fourth tier behind Stockport.
Summarising his time at the club so far, Ker shared: “Why this remains such fun is we are insulated from some of the pressures, challenges and stresses that others have. There’s been this debate at Liverpool recently about Joel Matip being injured beyond his contract (ending next summer). The debate is, ‘Should Liverpool give him a new contract to see him through?’. We have had that situation ourselves in the past at Wrexham and been able to say, ‘Just port the player because we can afford to’.
"All those things are what I mean when I talk about the absolute privilege of doing this. If I’d have done good in life and bought, say, Chippenham Town (near Ker’s family in Wiltshire), I couldn’t make decisions that are financially irresponsible but will ultimately go down well with the fans. Here, though, decisions can be made, such as the temporary stand, that may bring us long-term benefits beyond the black and white of a balance sheet. That’s a real privilege.”