How Charlton took full advantage of Wrexham and Ryan Reynolds' fame to scoop huge pay day

The co-owner of Charlton Athletic has revealed how his club used the fame of Wrexham and its Hollywood owners to achieve a big pay day.

The Red Dragons' profile has increased significantly in the last few years after being taken over by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, whose journey has been charted in the Welcome to Wrexham documentary.

Wrexham now boast a large global following, and many of their opponents experience a large boost in attendance figures when they come to town.

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However, one League One side who took advantage more than most was Charlton as the club launched a major marketing campaign ahead of Phil Parkinson's team visiting the Valley last month.

Addicks co-owner Charlie Mevthen told the ‘Where's The Money Gone?’ podcast how they specifically went about targeting international Wrexham fans, as well as people interested in the Disney+ documentary.

It resulted in the fixture becoming a huge commercial success for Charlton, drawing a bumper crowd of 24,692, around 10,000 more than their normal attendances.

Methven said: “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 south east 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.”

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 displaying the crests of both Charlton and Wrexham were sold at the match, invoking the ire of supporters on social media.

However, Methven said the merchandise proved profitable and was targeted at Wrexham fans from overseas.

He said: “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.”