Actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny are bringing Hollywood to F1 town.
The Wrexham Football Club owners are joining an investor group taking 24 per cent equity stake in Alpine racing, with a £171m deal valuing the British based Alpine at around £700m following the investment, as announced by Alpine’s parent company Renault.
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Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney completed their takeover at Wrexham in 2021 and the Welsh club were promoted back to the Football League after a 15-year absence when they won the National League title in April.
Their popular docu-series ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ has proved a big hit in North America, propelling the little-known club into the global spotlight.
While we can’t expect to see Alpine drivers Estaban Ocon and Pierre Gasly appear in Deadpool 4 (well, we might!), what we can expect is a boost in the F1 team’s media profile, which in turn is hoped to support Alpine’s “performance over the long term”, according to Alpine chief executive Laurent Rossi.
With Reynolds’ talent and enthusiasm though, we should expect some creative promotional social media content and potentially a docu-series too. Both will surely ignite a bigger fan base.
Mountain Climber Plan
The plan is also to accelerate what’s called Alpine’s “Mountain Climber plan”, aimed at catching up with top teams in terms of state-of-the-art facilities and equipment.
“Mountain Climber” is a plan to be fighting for championships within the space of 100 races, starting in 2022.
Reynolds and McElhenny leads Maximum Effort Investments, and fellow-actor Michael B. Jordan and co-investors. They join Otro Capital and RedBird Capital buying into Alpine F1.
US investment firm RedBird, run by former Goldman Sachs banker Gerry Cardinale, is an investor in Fenway Sports Group, the owner of Premier League side Liverpool and the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
RedBird also has a controlling stake in French football club Toulouse and bought Italy’s AC Milan last August in a €1.2bn (£1bn) deal that also involved the owners of the New York Yankees baseball team.
Alpine are currently fifth after eight races of the 2023 season.
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