⚡ Welcome to Wrexcaxa?
The addition of Reynolds+McElhenney to Necaxa's star-studded ownership group will get Liga MX some buzz, but there are some key differences from the Welsh darlings.
Two of the world’s most famous soccer owners added shares of a Liga MX team to their portfolio recently, Variety reported Monday.
Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, the actors-turned-investors behind Wrexham AFC’s storybook rise to League One, are taking a stake in Necaxa.1
When rumors of the Hollywood duo’s interest in a fifth-division club started circulating in the fall of 2020, I did an interview with a bemused BBC Radio host. What on earth could a couple of guys known for making big comic book movies or cult comedies want with a Welsh team? I didn’t have the answers the presenter was looking for, and few had the foresight to see the vision those owners had for the team.
It turns out they wanted to have a cool club and to boost that cool factor by telling the stories around that club. “Welcome to Wrexham” has become a surprise hit, earning rave reviews and strong ratings.
The FX show is an example of just how globalized the sport has become and how the way in which club soccer is consumed has changed. The team will come to the U.S. for summer friendly matches once again this summer, attracting fans who months ago might never have imagined themselves attending a soccer match but found connection in the TV show to head to the stadium.
Tell your story right and give people something to latch on to, and they may reward you by showing up, buying tickets, buying merchandise and watching the team every weekend.
Liga MX long has said it wants to be part of that globalization. The second part of the equation where new fans buy tickets and jerseys is universally attractive. But it has done little of the hard work it actually would take to win over new fans in the U.S. (where it remains the most-watched soccer league but is seeing its hold on that title slipping), the Americas and around the world.
Necaxa didn’t need more celebrities. In addition to perhaps more ‘traditional sports owners’ like Al Tylis and Sam Porter, plus legacy owner Ernesto Tinajero Flores, who remains the team president, the club’s ownership list includes2 actress Eva Longoria, model Kate Upton and her husband MLB champion Justin Verlander, NBA champion Shawn Marion, ex-NFL player Odell Beckham Jr., and former Germany international Mesut Ozil.
Despite the big names and the bankroll associated with them, some fans in Mexico haven’t seen the boost. There have been some solid arrivals since the star-studded group, branded NX Football, took possession of a 50% stake in the team in April 2021, but few big-name stars have arrived to take the field rather than sit in the directors’ box. This season’s top performer, forward Diber Cambindo, arrived on loan as a cast-off from Liga MX grande Cruz Azul.
“The squad still is limited in terms of budget. There was a lot of expectation, but that’s diminished with time,” said Alan Amper, a lifelong Necaxa fan who last year published a book about the club’s history. “It’s going to take another effort to make the fans dream again.”
Necaxa has been a fun team to watch this season - partly because of their bad habit of conceding first and then clawing their way back. But they have the best Mexican manager in the league in Eduardo Fentanes, one of the country’s best rising stars in Heriberto Jurado and Cambindo scoring in a variety of ways.
An injury to Cambindo and a tough schedule in the back quarter of the season means the Rayos now need to win a pair of games to get out of the play-in tournament and into the Liguilla proper.
Those are the type of dramatic moments that could lead to a compelling TV show, which is what everyone expects when the Reynolds+McElhenney duo takes its place in the ownership suite.
Will those expectations be met? It’s far too early to say.
From the Variety story:
“Sources close to the situation stressed that speculation about a Club Necaxa docu-series or other TV properties is premature because there (are) no deals are in place with the team for any such projects. The new investors still need to work out TV access around the team’s existing rights pacts.
We know the rights for actual games will be complicated. Liga MX infamously rejects putting a centralized TV deal together - or at least it always has in the past. That means teams must put together their own agreement with a broadcaster in Mexico and, often, with another in the U.S.
The ‘secondary rights’ may be easier for Necaxa to spin off for a documentary series meant to tell the club’s story and to draw in fans from the U.S. and beyond.
Already, Necaxa has tried to make some inroads with fans who don’t yet support a club in Mexico. The club was featured in a 2016 documentary series called Fuerza Necaxa that ran on Netflix. It also sent a team to The Soccer Tournament last year, as did Wrexham and other teams trying to grow their brands with young fans in the U.S.
The other potential element standing in the way of a Wrexham-style series is the real-life story around Necaxa. While Reynolds and McElhenney know how to make good TV, and plenty of good producers can gin up a good story, Necaxa doesn’t have the same type of community around it that Wrexham does.
It’s not that Necaxa doesn’t have history. Of course, after more than a century as a club, it does. It’s that much of its history happened elsewhere, before the club moved from Mexico City in 2003.
There are narrative threads on which to pull. Some fans still gather together in Mexico City to watch matches, sticking with the club even after the move.
Amper cites Mexican author Juan Villoro, who like him stayed a Necaxa fan after the team left the capital. The soccer-obsessed literary legend has said dropping Necaxa for another Mexico City team would be “betraying the child who picked these colors.”
Last month, a long-shot candidate for Head of Government in Mexico City announced one of his proposals would be to secure the team’s return, though a team abandoning a central Mexican city of around 1 million people for the megalopolis would be a reversion of the Wrexham narratives.
Instead, you have a team that, while it recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, has been in its current home for just more than two decades. That’s long enough to establish traditions, and there is a Necaxa fan base in Aguascalientes. But the parents who would’ve passed their love of Necaxa on to their children are still more than 300 miles away.
An infusion of attention and/or cash from the outside could spark excitement locally and encourage fans to take ownership of the team in the city. New traditions could be made. Fans could realize what they have in their backyard that they perhaps have been taking for granted.
So, too, could increased investment in areas beyond the men’s first team. The Necaxa women’s team has never made the Liga MX Femenil postseason and recorded no more than two wins in each of the last four tournaments.
If a Welcome to Wrexham-style series is coming to Necaxa, it will make the club one of the most visible in the country.
“Honestly, as a fan, it does make me excited,” Amper said. “Necaxa is an integral part of Mexican culture, and this is a good opportunity to expand to a world-wide level. There’s a great opportunity to do a series.”
If a show isn’t in the cards, the ambition Reynolds and McElhenney have shown with Wrexham and in their non-sporting business ventures at least can give fans from Mexico City to Aguascalientes hope that their team may get off the treadmill of being a mid-tier team in Liga MX and try to jump up to compete with the grandes and the power clubs in Monterrey in an effort to re-capture the glory days of the 90s.
That treadmill feels like the same one Liga MX’s international efforts are on as well. There’s movement, but it’s hard to say the league is actually going anywhere.
Some teams have launched, then closed, English-language social media accounts. There are various attempts at outreach during the Leagues Cup, when the entire league’s teams are in the United States for matches against MLS teams.
At this point, any international attention - especially attention paid to a team that isn’t one of the league’s power teams - is a good thing.
An active role from Necaxa’s newest owners could lead to much more attention than even fans who remember those great moments in Mexico City ever could’ve imagined.
Thanks to Alan Amper for his perspective. You can find more information about his book here:
Sportico reported there is a swap element, with the NX Football group buying 5% of Wrexham.
Or at one time has included
Great read Jon! My dad used to talk about how Necaxa was dark horse team in the 90s and this was coming from an America fan. Now I'm wondering if they ship that book here to the States or if its available anywhere here because I love to learn about Mexican soccer history.