How Wrexham have helped US fans take to football

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Wrexham director Humphrey Ker reckons the TV series charting the club's fortunes has helped increase the popularity of football in the USA.

The Welcome to Wrexham show has told the story of the north Wales team's rise through the divisions under Hollywood owners Rob Mac – formerly McElhenney – and Ryan Reynolds.

The series – the fifth season of which premiered early this year – has been a hit in America, something Ker (pictured above) says is "really important" to the Championship club.

"The success of what we are doing is very much based on getting American people to be interested in what's going on at Wrexham," Ker said.

Ker says another television series, Ted Lasso, has also played a part in raising the profile of football on the other side of the Atlantic, with this summer's World Cup allowing the sport to ride the "crest of a wave" in the States.

He believes the two shows have combined to show US audiences "some of the distinct qualities of football that don't exist in American sport".

According to Ker, Mac was "fascinated" when he got involved at Wrexham by the idea of promotion and relegation because they do not exist in American sports.

"They are closed shops. What is great about the closed-shop system is you'll see the way they do things with their drafts, every year pretty much it's different teams who make the final," Ker told BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast.

"But the minus side of it is that you have huge swathes of the seasons that are just dead rubbers - it doesn't matter.

"So a big thing for Rob was 'wait a second, you're saying the last few games of the season, if it's 17 versus 18 [in the table], that's a massive game? If it's eight versus 20 that's a massive game?'

"There are almost no unimportant games in a regular league season. I think that's a thing Americans have really taken to when they follow domestic leagues in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain."

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