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Wrexham owners Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac started this whole thing by buying a struggling fifth-tier Welsh soccer club for roughly $2.5 million. Five years, three promotions, and one extremely successful television show later, their ownership group has now bought the pub where Wrexham was basically born.
Wrexham’s ownership group purchased The Turf from Admiral Taverns, bringing the historic pub under the same ownership umbrella as the club and Racecourse Ground. The club announcement says the deal is designed to preserve the building’s history while allowing Wrexham to invest further in the surrounding matchday experience.
Wrexham Now Owns The Team, The Stadium And The Pub
That sentence feels like the logical conclusion of every sports fan’s dream: Buy your favorite soccer team, buy its stadium, then buy the bar next door.
The Turf is not simply a convenient place to grab a pint before kickoff, either. Originally known as the Turf Hotel, it is deeply intertwined with the club’s history dating back to 1864, when Wrexham AFC was founded there.
The pub once served as a changing room for players, and its balcony provided a view into matches at the Racecourse Ground until 1999. It remains attached to the stadium complex on Mold Road and has spent generations functioning as one of the main gathering points for supporters.
Then Welcome to Wrexham arrived and turned a local pub into an international tourist destination.
Landlord Wayne Jones became one of the documentary’s recurring personalities, while Reynolds, Mac, and seemingly every celebrity who visited Wrexham eventually appeared inside. Paul Rudd drank there. Will Ferrell visited. Prince William even stopped by in 2024.
The pub became so overwhelmed after Wrexham secured promotion from the National League in 2023 that it ran out of beer and temporarily closed.
That is usually a pretty strong indication you have a successful sports bar.
The Turf Is Staying The Turf
There is good news for anyone worried Hollywood ownership means someone is about to replace the old pub with a sleek VIP lounge charging £23 for an artisanal lager.
Jones is staying.
The longtime landlord will continue operating The Turf day-to-day, and Wrexham says the experience for normal non-matchday customers will remain largely unchanged.
The bigger plans involve the surrounding area. Bringing the club, stadium and pub under common ownership gives Wrexham more control over its fan zone and future matchday development while the Racecourse Ground itself continues expanding.
The purchase also fits a broader strategy. The ownership group has acquired land needed for its new Kop stand, purchased The Rock as a home for Wrexham’s women’s team and invested in new training infrastructure.
But none of those transactions has quite the same storybook quality as buying The Turf.
Wrexham existed there long before Hollywood discovered it. Now the guys responsible for turning the club into a global phenomenon own the pub that was there at the beginning.