WREXHAM, Wales — Clutching a pint of Guinness in one hand and flicking through photos on his cellphone in the other, Nestor Aguedelo laughed and joked with his wife and sister-in-law in a corner of The Turf, a pub in north Wales that has rapidly become one of Britain’s most unlikely tourist hot spots.

“We came to Wrexham because of the TV documentary,” said Aguedelo, an engineer from Bogota, Colombia. “We got to know the city because of that, and we just wanted to see it for ourselves.”

It’s a familiar story being told across this former market, mining and brewing town, whose status has been transformed since its down-on-its-luck soccer club was bought by Hollywood celebrities Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney for $2.5 million in 2021.

That notoriety has only increased since the pair launched a fly-on-the-wall TV series — “Welcome to Wrexham” — that has turned the team’s players and some of Wrexham’s residents into familiar faces on screens around the world.

Tourists from around the world are now coming to find out more about this long-overlooked Welsh city with an urban population of 45,000.

“When we think of Ryan Reynolds, we think of Wrexham,” Linda Williams, 70, a visitor from Reynolds’ native Canada, said as she walked through the city center during a three-week trip to Wales.

Tourism revenue in Wrexham reached about $235 million in 2023, up 20% from the year before and almost 50% since 2018, said Ian Bancroft, chief executive of Wrexham County Borough Council.

As “the Rob and Ryan effect” — as some are labeling it — takes hold, the local economy has been boosted by businesses investing in, or relocating to, Wrexham.

American food manufacturer Kellogg’s recently announced it is creating Europe’s largest cereal factory in Wrexham’s industrial estate with a $100 million investment delivering at least 130 jobs as part of a relocation.

Boutique hotels are popping up across the city, while Hannah Thomas, a local property manager, said more Americans are buying flats in the area and renting them out on Airbnb to tourists coming to watch soccer.

Meanwhile, Wrexham Lager, a brewery that sponsors the team and boasts to being the only lager available on the Titanic’s doomed voyage in 1912, said it has gained such visibility from the TV series that it is expanding internationally.

“We’ve started to make more significant strides in the past 12 months by growing our Welsh retailer footprint, expanding across the U.K., launching into Scandinavia and Australia, and plan to go live in Canada and the U.S. in the coming months,” CEO James Wright said.

Wrexham is Wales’ fourth-largest city by population and a short drive from major northwest England hubs Liverpool and Manchester. It was built on heavy industry, agriculture and mining but has failed to punch its weight as the major urban region of north Wales in recent years.

A tired-looking city center contains some empty, boarded-up stores. Memories remain of race riots in a housing project that made national headlines in 2003.

Now, though, there’s optimism and aspiration.

The first destination for overseas visitors is invariably Wrexham’s soccer ground, the Racecourse, which is the world’s oldest soccer stadium hosting international matches that is still in use. Connected to it is the Turf, a pub that has become lively centerpiece in the documentary series.

The pub’s manager, Wayne Jones, has become a celebrity in his own right, owing to his frequent appearances in “Welcome to Wrexham,” with actors Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd among those visiting the pub.

Jones even allowed Prince William behind the bar to pour a pint.

“The Turf was very similar to Wrexham as a whole — the town was struggling, businesses in it were struggling, and we’ve landed very lucky,” Jones said of what he describes as his “little boozer.”