How Ryan Reynolds became Canada’s incredible business leader

Ryan Reynolds’ business is booming. This week it bought Montreal payment technology company Nuvi. It recently sold Mint Mobile for $1.7 billion. He unloaded the gin company for another $825 million.

But the jewel in Reynolds’ business crown may be the floating Welsh football club he bought in 2021 with fellow actor Rob McElhenney for $3 million.

For years, Wrexham Football Club has been struggling in the National League, the fifth tier of the English football league system.

The cast invested in new stages and better players. Documents filed this week show the group lost nearly $5 million in the past 12 months alone.

But now the club is finally ready to progress to the next level.

With a win this weekend, Wrexham will move out of the lower National League and into the Premier League, a step closer to the prestigious Premier League.

“It’s a big deal,” said Canadian soccer player Craig Forrest. I mean especially when you look at where this club Wrexham came from.

The difference between the league Wrexham is trying to climb out of and the top of the football pyramid, Forrest explained, is like the difference between “the English NHL and the pick-up hockey league”.

Already, Reynolds has helped build the club with the same enthusiasm and understated charm that brands across the industry are eager to join.

A beautiful person who thinks

Forrest, a podcast contributor to Footy Prime, played for Canada’s men’s national team and spent years in the Premier League, with one stint with Wrexham before the club fell on hard times.

He was impressed by the business acumen of Wrexham’s new owners. Welcome to Wrexham It was a hit, distributed in Canada by Disney+. He increased the audience of the club significantly. Before the actors bought the club, Wrexham’s main sponsor was a local towing company. Reynolds and McElhenny replaced it in a branding deal with TikTok.

Their social media accounts, with millions of followers worldwide, helped spread the word.

“It’s a bit of a case study in terms of what we’ve seen happen in international sports in the last, you know, four or five years,” said Cheri Bradish, director and marketing chair of the Future Sports Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University.

She says Reynolds has created an image of himself as someone who cares deeply about the brands he loves.

That worked in Wrexham. He worked with his gene company Aviator and also worked with Mint Mobile.

So, she says, it’s no surprise that every conversation regarding the sale of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators includes the name Ryan Reynolds.

“I think what he represents, especially in Canada, is the personality of what we see as very attractive to the general sports market, which is good branding and good messaging,” she told CBC News.

Recently seen The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonReynolds spoke about the importance of storytelling in promoting Wrexham, and confirmed his interest in buying the Senators.

“I’m trying to do this,” he said. “It’s too expensive, I need a partner with very deep pockets.”

See | Reynolds is looking for a sponsor to buy Senators:

Connect with the audience

Buying a sports franchise requires extremely deep pockets, often in the form of pension plans or venture capitalists.

But this need cuts both ways.

Deep Pockets needs someone like Reynolds to rally the community with real enthusiasm and be the face of an ownership group. And slowly, Reynolds built himself into something of a business juggernaut.

A recent Bloomberg piece compared Reynolds’ work to brands run by celebrities like George Clooney, Kim Kardashian and Jay-Z.

None of these guarantees success. Wrexham suffered a promotion discount last year. Mint Mobile sales can still be challenged by regulators and no investment is ever a sure bet.

But Reynolds has carved out a unique role and traveled a unique path to get here. From a glamorous actor, to a Marvel superhero to an investment scoundrel, he’s into something similar.

At its core, celebrity entrepreneurship is about a star’s ability to connect with their audience, tell a story, and engage people.

For proof of that, just look at how he spoke after Wrexham’s thriller on the pitch in Wales recently.

“I don’t think I have any more heart. I think I used all the shots I had left,” he told BT News after the game. “That was unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

That’s why the actor’s biggest roles are as likely to come in the boardroom as they are on a film set.