The co-owner of one of Wrexham’s rivals has spilled the beans on how they capitalised on the club’s A-list ownership to score a major financial win.

With the Red Dragons’ fame skyrocketing since Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney took the helm, and their story unfolding in the hit series “Welcome to Wrexham,” the club’s worldwide appeal has soared. As Wrexham rolls into town, local clubs have seen a spike in their own crowd numbers.

But Charlton Athletic turned this to their advantage more than others, launching a colossal marketing blitz for last month’s League One match at the Valley as Phil Parkinson’s squad rolled in. On the ‘Where’s The Money Gone?’ podcast, Charlton’s Charlie Methven detailed the strategy of enticing international fans of Wrexham and watchers of the documentary to the game.

The savvy move paid off, pulling in a mammoth 24,692 supporters, which is about 10,000 over their average. Methven revealed: “We’ve got a big stadium with a 27,000 capacity, and our average crowd would be around 15,000 so we’ve got 12,000 spare seats.

“We did some market research on it, and one of the things we did was look to target international followers of Wrexham for whom coming to London would be a relatively low-tariff way of watching the club that they’re following. As a club, our ground is very close to London City Airport, which flies to a lot of European destinations.”

“Then we started our outreach in earnest, targeting the southeast London and Kent area to try and find the people for whom an interest in Welcome to Wrexham would make that particular game at their local football club relevant.”

A Charlton Athletic FC logo painted onto grass at the side of a football pitch

The Valley stadium, home of Charlton Athletic ( 

Image:

CameraSport via Getty Images)

Methven estimates that around 1,650 tickets were sold to international Wrexham fans, while a further 3,000 to 4,000 went to people in London and the surrounding areas whose interest was piqued by the Red Dragons’ fame. There were also 2,647 fans in the away end at the Valley for the game which finished 1-1 after Charlton scored a last-minute penalty.

Another factor Methven believes helped boost the gate was the presence of YouTuber Mark Goldbridge. The content creator hosted a live watchalong from the Charlton TV studio on his popular channel called ‘That’s Football’, which boasts 1.27 million subscribers.

Methven said: “It was a wonderfully successful day with 25,000 full-paying fans. We had record beer sales and huge retail sales because those international Wrexham followers came two hours early. We knew we were going to have that kind of audience, so we started selling different types of sponsorships and advertising to different brands. It was a really interesting experiment.”

Not all of Charlton’s tactics to increase revenue proved popular with their own fanbase, though.

Half-and-half scarves showing off the emblems of Charlton and Wrexham were a hit at the game despite the scorn they sparked online. Methven revealed that the souvenirs turned a profit, aimed specially at international supporters of Wrexham.

He explained: “We got a little bit of pushback and that’s totally normal. There’s always been this faint tension between what you might call ‘real fans’ and what might be called ‘plastics’.

“We had various retail offerings, including some half-and-half scarves. Some Charlton fans took exception to that, but we had 300 manufactured and only had 11 left. They weren’t aimed at Charlton fans, they were aimed at international Wrexham followers who wanted a memento of their day.”