Start your engines, Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney and Michael B. Jordan! The three Hollywood stars are making the leap to F1 with an investment in the Alpine racing team, the squad’s ownership announced Monday.
Reynolds and McElhenney, both 46, first jumped into the sporting world in 2021 when the actors bought the Welsh soccer team Wrexham AFC for $2.5 million in 2020.
Now the two are teaming up with fellow actor Jordan to buy into the Alpine F1 team under Reynolds’ Maximum Effort Investments group. Reynolds shared the news of the purchase in an Instagram story on Monday.
In total, Otro Capital, RedBird Capital Partners and Maximum Effort Investments are buying 24 percent of the Alpine team from the Renault Group, the team said in a statement.
The 24% ownership in the team is worth $218 million. In total, the new deal values the F1 team at $900 million, Alpine said.
Alpine said its F1 team “will benefit” from the new investment group — highlighted by Reynolds, McElhenney and Jordan — given the group’s “expertise and track record in the sports industry,” including “media, sponsorship, ticketing, hospitality, commercial rights management, licensing and merchandising strategies” the Alpine team believes will help “unlock incremental value creation and new growth levers.”
After purchasing Wrexham AFC in 2020, Reynolds and McElhenney helped turn around the soccer club in dramatic fashion.
This past season, the soccer team earned a promotion into England’s fourth-ranked football league, up from the country’s fifth-tier league, with clutch wins down the stretch. (Wrexham had previously been relegated outside the top-four leagues — known in England as the “Football League” — since 2008 following a run of 87-straight years competing within those top-four tiers.)
Wrexham’s season and transition to having its new Hollywood ownership was documented in FX’s recent Welcome to Wrexham docuseries. Reynolds and McElhenney have particularly been enjoying the team’s turnaround, often updating fans on social media and appearing at games together.
Reynolds recently described one of the late-season wins that helped Wrexham advance back into the Football League as “the most dramatic thing I’ve ever seen in my life” and almost as good a day as “the birth of my kids.”
On Monday, Alpine cited Reyndols’ investment group as having “a strong track record of company-building” with other sports franchises like Wrexham, the Dallas Cowboys and Toulouse FC, among others.
James Toney, Maximum Effort Investments’ co-founder alongside Reynolds, said in a statement that their group “focuses on unlocking value through the power of storytelling.”
“And we believe there is tremendous untapped potential in Alpine Racing,” Toney said. “We are eager to help shine a light on this incredible team.”
Reynolds also recently entertained an offer to buy the Ottawa Senators, but ultimately pulled out of the bidding.
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