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Welsh Fire team, which featured Pakistan pacer Shaheen Shah Afridi in The Hundred league, are look for new investor and Hollywood star owners of Wrexham football club could be the answer. Updated: September 16, 2024 4:30 PM IST By Edited by Movie stars have been making their way into various cricket leagues around the world, led by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who bought the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) back in 2008. Since then actors have been buying stakes in either cricket leagues of the Indian Soccer League (ISL).
But English cricket is all set to get an unprecedented bid from a Hollywood superstar to buy a stake in one of their teams in ‘The Hundred’. The team in question here is Welsh Fire, which featured Pakistan spearhead Shaheen Shah Afridi till last year and the actor who is interested in buying a stake is Ryan Reynolds – star of Hollywood blockbuster ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’. According to a report in ESPNCricinfo website, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny, who are co-owners of Wrexham AFC football team, have been in contact with Glamorgan about the prospect of buying a stake in Welsh Fire – the Cardiff-based team in the ‘Hundred’.
Welsh Fire featured Shaheen Shah Afridi till 2023 season and was resigned for 2024 season for 100,000 pounds but the Pakistan pacer chose to skip the league this year and was replaced by New Zealand’s Matt Henry. Reynolds, who stars as comic character Deadpool in the Marvel movies, and McElhenny bought Wrexham in November 2020 and have witnessed back-to-back promotions in 2022-23 and 2023-24, with the club now playing in the third tier of English football now. The pair are believed to be considering further investment in Welsh sport.
“The ECB formally started the process for securing private investment in the Hundred earlier this month. Raine, the American investment bank, has distributed prospectuses to interested parties and Vikram Banerjee, who is leading the process as the ECB’s director of business operations, said there has been a ‘phenomenal level of interest from a diverse mix of investors’,” the ESPNCricinfo report read. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney joined celebrations in Wrexham, Wales, on May 2, after the town’s local football club Wrexham AFC, which the duo own, won the 2023 National League title and subsequently got promoted for the first time in 15 years — NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) Sophia Gardens has the smallest capacity of any venue in the Hundred, and Welsh Fire are expected to be the cheapest franchise with an estimated valuation of around £30 million.
Revenue from initial investments will be distributed across the counties but Glamorgan will be handed a 51 per cent stake in Welsh Fire which they can control. “Glamorgan have spoken to a number of different interested parties over the past few months, with the owners of Pakistan Super League franchise Multan Sultans understood to be among them. But there has been particular intrigue around the prospect of Reynolds and McElhenny buying a stake which Dan Cherry, the club’s chief executive, believes is ‘an exciting proposition’,” the report said.
Hollywood star Reynolds has a reported net-worth of around $350 million or Rs 3,000 crore, according to reports. It is believed that much of his wealth comes from his business ventures which include sales of companies like ‘Aviation Gin’ and ‘Mint Mobile’. He sold Aviation Gin to Diageo in a deal that could ultimately be worth $610 million.
The deal paid $335 million cash upfront. Reynolds’ biggest movies at the box office include ‘Deadpool’ (2016), which grossed over $780 million worldwide, and its sequel ‘Deadpool 2’ (2018), which grossed over $785 million. He has also appeared in other successful films such as ‘National Lampoon’s Van Wilder’ (2002), ‘The Proposal’ (2009), ‘Safe House’ (2012) and ‘6 Underground’ (2019), among others.
However, head and shoulders above the rest of his movies, Reynolds’s biggest blockbuster has been his last movie – ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ with Hugh Jackman, which has reportedly grossed $1.32 billion worldwide so far. For breaking news and live news updates, like us on or follow us on and .
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