The Unbeatable Power of Story

I’m sitting on the couch one October morning while sipping a coffee next to my son. We’ve been watching the English Premiere League every Saturday morning together so I turn on the TV to watch Manchester City vs. Arsenal. Except, a funny thing happens. I notice a random Welsh soccer club called Wrexham is playing at the same time. On the surface, there is no reason whatsoever this should be a decision and yet, I’m leaning towards watching Wrexham.

For the past few weeks prior, I’ve also been watching a new show called Welcome To Wrexham where Ryan Reynolds and Rob Macelheny (two famous actors) bought a Welsh soccer team at the bottom of the English football system. Like, the very bottom. Someone on the show explained it in terms of the American baseball system and if Manchester City is the equivalent to the New York Yankees, Wrexham would be like a high school baseball team.

All to say, I have no reason to ever watch Wrexham over the English Premier League. It is lower-quality soccer, a worse product, with overall fewer stakes on the line. But in the end, my son and I watched the Wrexham game.

Why?

Story.

The more I explored the answer I realized what a powerful marketing tactic Welcome To Wrexham was. Through watching the show, I learned all about the town, the people on the team, the people who work for the club, old fans, young fans, and everything in between. In short, I was told a story about the team and I was hooked. I was invested in the outcome of their games in a way I simply wasn’t for the English Premier League.

It reminded me of what Matthew Dicks says in his book, Storyworthy:

A story is like a coat. When we tell a story, we put a coat on our audience. Our goal is to make that coat as difficult to remove as possible. I want that coat to be impossible to take off. Days after you’ve heard my story at the dinner table or the conference room or the golf course or the theater, I want you to be thinking about my story. I want that coat to cling to your body and mind.

I’d put on the coat and nothing was the same after. So, it got me thinking.

Why doesn’t every sports team or sports league invest all of their marketing dollars into doing something similar to Welcome To Wrexham?

That’s what sports are anyway: the power of story in action. Any game is set up with the ingredients for a perfect story. It lends itself perfectly to this format. If I’m the head of the NFL, NHL, NBA, PGA, etc. I would take any marketing dollars to hire a team to more or less copy exactly what Welcome To Wrexham did.

It would be my home-based piece of content that any additional marketing dollars would be used to chop up and distribute in different micro-series on Instagram Reels and TikTok.