Welcome to [Frat Boy] Wrexham
The hosts of a popular Barstool podcast just bought into a minor league hockey team. What could go wrong with the latest creator/owner?
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, Eben discusses a new class of pro sports owner…
On Tuesday the hosts of Spittin’ Chiclets, Barstool’s very popular hockey podcast, announced that they’d accomplished their long running-goal of buying into a professional franchise.
Details came 12 hours later. The Chiclets crew, which includes a trio of former NHL players—Paul Bissonnette, Ryan Whitney and Keith Yandle—have become minority owners in the Greensboro Gargoyles, a new team set to join the ECHL1 later this year.
It’s the latest business offshoot for the podcast, which launched in 2015 and now has a branded lemonade-flavored vodka, a beer, a ball hockey tournament, a live show circuit, and—of course—a sizeable assortment of merch. In the mold of some of the internet’s biggest content creators, they’ve built a cult following of people (mostly men) who treat the show in the same way that many people treat their favorite teams. Spittin’ Chiclets doesn’t just have listeners, it has fans.
The show sits among the 15 most downloaded sports podcasts on Apple, and it boasts more than 2.2 million followers across its social channels2. That includes more than 370,000 on YouTube, where the group has launched myriad video series—one on minor league hockey, one on college hockey, one on golf, etc. That’s likely where you’ll see the Gargoyles in the near future. The ECHL team will obviously be a constant podcast topic, but I expect the social/video platforms to be where Chiclets really pushes its new toy to the masses.
If this sounds vaguely familiar—celebrities buy a minor league sports team with the aim of using their platform, humor and fanbase to grow its stature—you might be thinking of Wrexham AFC. Actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney took over the fifth-division Welsh soccer team in 2020 and the result has become lore in our industry. The two stars struck the perfect chord of lovable self-deprecation, local deference and global media savvy. Thanks largely to an FX docuseries called Welcome to Wrexham, the Red Dragons are inexplicably among the most popular soccer teams in America.3
Reynolds and McElhenney “bought” Wrexham for $0—they paid with a peppercorn, from what I understand—and the team has since risen two divisions. Annual revenue was around $2 million per year when they took over, and was likely $18-$20 million last season. I recently asked Sportico valuations guru Kurt Badenhausen for a rough guess on what the team might be worth today. His estimate: at least $30 million.
There are plenty of differences between Wrexham AFC and the Greensboro Gargoyles. The celebrities are different. So are the sports, the countries, the cultures, and the amount of equity involved. Here’s another big one: their style. When Reynolds and McElhenney took over Wrexham, they thanked the supporters trust, then filmed a commercial for one of the club’s oldest sponsors.
The Spittin’ Chiclets crew took a different approach. In a five-minute announcement at the start of their Tuesday podcast, the hosts joked that they might rewrite the league’s CBA, spread rumors about opposing players’ private parts, blast house music during games, and install gold toilets. They quoted Billy Madison, called Raiders owner Mark Davis “the guy in Oakland with the horrible haircut,” praised the Danbury Trashers4, and teased the idea of putting the visiting captain’s face at the back of the arena’s urinals.
“I’ve always dreamed of being an owner and just carving the refs in the media,” Whitney said.
“I'm going to see my role as a Jerry Jones/Lou Lamoriello,” Bissonnette joked. “I am going to have my fucking hands on everything... I am going to run the shit out of this team to multiple championships and these guys aren't getting paid until they win.”
“Come on down to Greensboro,” Yandle said in a mock free agent pitch perfect for a frat house. “We’ll give you a free membership at the local course. Play golf every day, muck it up with the boys, enjoy the band during the game, and win some games for the fellas.”
Media has for decades been the financial lifeblood of big-time pro sports. The average NFL team isn’t worth $5.93 billion because it sells out eight home games per year; it’s worth that much because media companies pay the league a virtually unlimited sum to broadcast the games. But as our media consumption changes—and lets face it, our attention spans evaporate—sports need a new vanguard.
Enter the content creator/owner. While celebrities have bought into sports teams for years, trading on their promotional capabilities, no one has managed to blend their platform and their expertise quite like McElhenney and Reynolds.
Others are sure to follow. Dude Perfect, the five Texas friends who turn trick shots into a YouTube empire, recently bought an English soccer team and are featuring the team in their videos. Eva Longoria is spearheading a docuseries about the Mexican soccer team she bought into5. I wouldn’t be shocked to see MrBeast, the YouTube king himself, do something similar.
Is all of this good or bad? We’ll see. I’ve listened to Spittin’ Chiclets for years, and I genuinely enjoy the show. And in between the jokes about visiting players’ privates and the gold toilets, the hosts also had some decent ideas about the game atmosphere and arena concessions. They discussed putting a marching band in the arena, similar to big-time college barns. I love that.
They are wholly unserious owners, sure, but so are many of the old, rich white guys that own NFL and NBA teams. They’re just less bro-y.
Jacob’s ⚡ Take: ‘Dude, we should totally own a sports team’ is the new ‘Dude, let’s start a podcast.’
BTW, a much as I love a good gag or gimmick, as a proud Winston-Salem, NC native, you won’t catch me dead in Greensboro Gargoyle gear.
Programming Note: The Pick Six now comes in a separate post, in your inbox every Saturday AM. We’ll be updating everyone on our College Football Playoff pool next Monday, before the title game.
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.
The ECHL is two tiers below the NHL. It’s a feeder to the AHL, which is the feeder to the NHL.
The show even has a fanfic Instagram account, Chiclets Memes, with 203,000 followers.
Seriously. The club is more popular than every MLS club minus the one that has Messi.
For those unaware, the Trashers operated for two seasons in the UHL in 2004 and 2005. The club was run by the son of a mob associate, set a league record for penalty minutes, and disbanded when the owner was arrested 72 criminal charges.
Also minority investors in Club Necaxa: Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney!