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Any Birmingham City supporters of a certain vintage fortunate enough to get a ticket to this week’s sold-out clash at Wrexham will notice a few striking similarities with their last visit a little over 30 years ago.
Both the main stand they will be perched in and the ‘Tech End’ stand to their right have barely changed since that October 1, 1994, meeting. Nor has the Anglo-Welsh rivalry lessened over the intervening years, ensuring there should once again be a satisfying bite to Thursday’s match.
Throw in how, just as they were back in the mid-1990s, Birmingham head to north Wales determined to bounce back from relegation to the third tier at the first attempt and there could almost be a sense of deja vu for those from England’s Second City.
Except, if any fixture is to embody the changing landscape of British football these past few years, then this is surely it. The Hollywood derby, a phrase coined ahead of the first meeting at St Andrew’s in September, sees one club owned by two high-profile actors face another whose board boasts an all-time NFL great.
This is part of a wider trend that saw 2025 kick off with no less than 23 of the 72 EFL clubs in North American hands, almost a third.
As if to underline this increasing globalisation of a competition now into its 137th year, Thursday’s match will be broadcast live on both sides of the Atlantic as part of CBS’ new four-year deal to show games in the Championship, League One and League Two. Cosm’s immersive entertainment centres in Los Angeles and Dallas will also be screening Wrexham vs Birmingham live.
Quite the contrast from that last meeting in 1994, when only 6,002 were in attendance as the two teams played out a 1-1 draw that caused barely a ripple among the wider UK sporting public.
A good number of those tuning in will no doubt be star-spotting, especially after David Beckham joined Birmingham part-owner Tom Brady in the stands alongside Wrexham counterpart Rob McElhenney as the hosts ran out 3-1 winners in the autumn.
Other A-listers seen at Wrexham, the only EFL club to have had every league game shown live on TV in the United States this term, include Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria on the opening day and Channing Tatum just before Christmas.
This glamour and glitz may not be for everyone, but together with the Emmy award-winning documentary Welcome to Wrexham, these celebrity endorsements have helped the club owned by Ryan Reynolds and McElhenney successfully negotiate what has been surely the Football League’s most seismic change since Birmingham were last in north Wales.
Brady and Beckham attended the reverse fixture in Birmingham back in September (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Financial fair play (FFP) was brought in around a decade ago by the EFL to prevent clubs from getting themselves into trouble. It works by limiting either losses or expenditures to ensure no one spends beyond their means.
Since winning promotion from the National League in 2023, Wrexham have been subject to salary cost management protocols (SMCP). In League Two last season, this meant being able to spend 55 per cent of turnover on player-related expenditure, plus any cash injections from owners in the form of equity.
Now in League One, that proportion has risen slightly to 60 per cent. Thanks to the transformative effect of the documentary, specifically the lucrative sponsorship deals struck off the back of it, Wrexham’s annual income will be slightly north of £20million when the next set of accounts for 2023-24 are published in the spring.
This explains how the club can continue to offer very competitive salaries to prospective signings, even in a division where their average home league attendance of 12,869 — itself the highest in Wrexham’s history by almost 1,200 — is dwarfed by the likes of Birmingham, Huddersfield Town, Bolton Wanderers and even Charlton Athletic. Barnsley and Reading also post very similar crowds to Phil Parkinson’s men.
Birmingham are this season subject to those same SMCP rules for the first time, albeit as a newly relegated club they can spend 75 per cent of turnover on player expenditure. Plus, of course, the contributions via equity from ambitious owners Knighthead, which are understood to have helped fund League One’s largest spending spree in history last summer, as Jay Stansfield, Alfie May and Tomoki Iwata all joined.
Clearly, City, top of the table with games in hand on all their rivals, don’t plan to hang around in this division. With such a high-quality squad, there’s a strong suspicion they could even follow Ipswich Town’s example by jumping from the third tier to the Premier League via back-to-back promotions.
(Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
Providing the bookmakers are right and Birmingham are destined to go up this season, their financial landscape will change once again via a return to the profit and sustainability rules (PSR) employed in the Championship.
Here, clubs can lose up to £39m over a rolling three-year period before being hit with any punishment, which can include possible points deductions.
Gauging exactly what such a switch might mean for Birmingham — or even Wrexham, should Parkinson steer his team to a third successive promotion come May — isn’t easy due to how, by their very nature, club accounts are way out of date by the time published at Companies House.
Wrexham’s last set of figures for the financial year to June 30, 2023, (effectively the National League title-winning campaign) didn’t go public until March 28 last year.
Much had changed in the interim, most pertinently those lucrative sponsorship deals with the likes of United Airlines having formally kicked in. This rendered the £10.4m turnover posted in 2022-23 as obsolete in terms of working out what might be their spending levels now back in the EFL.
Likewise, Birmingham’s balance sheet today is likely to be very different to their most recently published accounts, not least because the club was only taken over after the end of that financial year to June 2023.
This means none of the extensive off-field work that has gone into reviving the club — including lucrative commercial deals such as Delta and a partnership with global sports and entertainment company Oak View Group (OVG) Europe that began a year ago — are reflected in the most recent balance sheet available to the public, which shows revenue at just shy of £20m and an annual loss of £25.3m.
Considering last summer’s significant transfer outlay was believed to be £20m-25m, the value of those commercial agreements will certainly become apparent down the line if — or, more likely, when — PSR kicks back in following promotion.
As for Wrexham, they also hope to be subject to those same Championship rules before long. This week saw the New York-based Allyn family step up their involvement after last October becoming minority shareholders in the club.
Kaleen Allyn joins the board as executive director at a time when things look encouraging on the financial front.
The first full two seasons of the Reynolds/McElhenney era brought combined losses of £8m, including a club record deficit of £5.1m during the 2022-23 season as the Hollywood pair successfully attempted to turbo-charge a revival.
Wrexham broke their transfer record to sign Mo Faal last August (Richard Sellers/PA Images via Getty Images)
With turnover at The Racecourse having more than doubled since those last available accounts, albeit with a second round of promotion bonuses also having to be paid, the smart money is on the next set for 2023-24 revealing, at worst, a small loss.
This season has brought a similar level of husbandry, even allowing for what will be an increased wage bill on the back of making nine permanent signings, including Arsenal goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo as a free agent.
Wrexham have broken their record transfer fee twice since August when signing Ollie Rathbone from Rotherham United for £375,000 and then spending another £500,000 on striker Mo Faal from West Bromwich Albion.
But these are modest outlays compared to some of their promotion rivals, including Huddersfield, who already this month have spent around £3.5m combined on striker Joe Taylor from Luton Town and Dion Charles from Bolton Wanderers, while even Wycombe Wanderers have broken their transfer record twice in January, a spree that includes spending £850,000 on Danish midfielder Magnus Westergaard.
Hence, should Parkinson achieve the remarkable by leading Wrexham to a third successive promotion in May, there’s surely going to be scope to push on again considering how much headroom the club should have in terms of PSR.
It’s been a transformative few years for the club and that looks set to continue, whatever the result on Thursday.
(Top photo: Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images)
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