Speaker
Description
The rise of Wrexham AFC, a used-to-be anonymous football club in Wales, has become one of the most intriguing stories in the world of sport in the past two years. This essay aims to examine the global-local dynamics through the lens of the improbable rise of the fifth-tiered club in the English football system since the takeover by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny in 2020. In doing so, critical discourse analysis on the docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham”, which is streaming globally on Hulu and Disney+, is adopted. This essay argues that, with the broadcast of the games and various alternative narratives on sport widely available through streaming platforms, new media conglomerates not only control “what you watch” but also set the tone on “how to think about what you watch”. With the rise of global streaming platforms, nothing is ever deemed “too local”. In terms of the media industry, “the local is global” has become a fashionable motto. Local places have become “phantasmagoric”, in Anthony Giddens’ sense. Football clubs have long been associated with local communities in the west. However, via the narratives of “Welcome to Wrexham”, the club has been elevated to an unprecedently global scale. It is especially critical to understand the dialectics between global and local in sport under these circumstances. Wrexham AFC embodies the complex of the topophilia of the local Welsh town and the global media narratives and becomes an icon of the globe’s endearing local club.
