The Swans chief is hopeful that high-profile investment will propel the club to greater heights this season
13:14, 08 Aug 2025Updated 14:28, 08 Aug 2025
Swansea City CEO Tom Gorringe(Image: Swansea City AFC)
“No, we’re Swansea. We’re not the new anything.” Swansea City head coach Alan Sheehan clearly doesn’t care much for any comparisons with his side’s north Wales counterparts that might be swirling around.
But it’s something he may have to get used to. Sign up to our Swansea City newsletter here.
After relentlessly chugging their way through the EFL, Wrexham now have the Championship, and Swansea, in their sights. Additionally, their shared status as the division’s flag-bearers for Welsh football means relations between the pair are likely to be heavily scrutinised over the coming season.
The recent events behind the scenes at the Swansea.com Stadium also mean comparisons to the Hollywood-backed blueprint behind Wrexham’s success are just as inevitable.
The involvement of Snoop Dogg as a minority investor still feels surreal to many. But in the context of the footballing landscape it probably shouldn’t. Fantasy has steadily morphed into reality, and now anything feels possible, if not initially plausible.
Ed Sheeran, Tom Brady, and of course Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, are all among the stars to have thrown themselves into the comparatively quaint world of EFL football – and you wouldn’t bet against more following their lead.
After all, this hasn’t happened by accident. The decision to bring celebrity investors like Snoop Dogg and Luka Modric on board has been part of a concerted effort to raise Swansea’s profile.
As Swans CEO Tom Gorringe explains, the business side of things has quickly dissipated any stardust floating around the boardroom.
“It becomes normal quite quickly,” he said in a sit down with the media this week. “When I was coming into the club and speaking to the owners about their vision and the strategy, this was always a part of it, and we wanted to build something here that’s special that that city can be proud of.
“Attracting high-profile individuals who have a real core purpose with us to the club and enable us to develop was always part of the plan. Those names were discussed all along, so it’s been in the pipeline for a little while.
“Luka is really passionate about the project. He’s humble and everything you’d expect him to be, and he’s been a great asset for us in terms of the football side, and great support in terms of getting the business that we needed to get done.
“Snoop again is incredibly passionate. He’s really competitive. He’s also obviously a huge global star with a huge audience and a massive personality. So again it’s a great asset for us to have as a football club and also as a city. It’s a great opportunity I think for Swansea as a whole to really get behind the club and what we’re trying to do here.
“The attention [it brings] is the first part, but what we’ve seen already, particularly with Snoop in the last two weeks, he’s opened a lot of doors, he’s provided us with opportunities we wouldn’t have had access to before,” he explained.
“I think there’s a lot of exciting things in the pipeline.”
When he took over as CEO in March, Gorringe freely admitted he had inherited a club facing some stiff financial challenges. Not only were the club having to navigate balancing the books in light of profit and sustainability rules, they were also at risk of being left behind by the greater financial muscle of their rivals.
There might be a reluctance to copy the homework of those at Racecourse word for word, but there’s clearly an acceptance that Wrexham have shown the way in terms of the commercial opportunities that City, and indeed many others, are perhaps yet to take full advantage of.
“If you look at Wrexham, and look at how they’ve developed,” Gorringe continued. “Their commercial revenue in League Two was over £20m. Ours, last year, was £2.6m.
“That’s the gulf. That’s the difficulty of the league we’re operating in, and ultimately the opportunity now of the changes that we’ve made.
“We’ve got a league where you have effectively financial doping through the parachute payments. This season in particular we’ve kind of got that pressure from both sides with Birmingham and Wrexham coming up from League One.
“So we have to be able to compete. We have to be able to grow our audience. We can’t rely on generating that income from the local area and from our own fanbase here in Swansea.
“We have to grow that fanbase and we have to generate that income. We have to attract partners from all over the world, and we hope this enables us to do that.”
The commercial gulf between Swansea and Wrexham has unsurprisingly translated to the transfer market, with Lewis O’Brien a pertinent case in point.
WalesOnline understands the midfielder was hugely keen on a return to the club after his successful loan spell last season, but ultimately Swansea simply couldn’t come up to the sort of levels Wrexham were willing to reach.
“Nobody has an unlimited budget; we have to operate in a financially sensible way to make sure we can get the right deals that enable us to maximise our playing budget and compete at the best possible level with what we’ve got,” Gorringe continued when talking about the challenges faced in the market this summer.
“The transfer market this year in the Championship is more competitive than it’s ever been.”
The hope is that bringing high-profile investors can help bridge the financial gap between Swansea and some of their competitors, but clearly this isn’t a project that will yield results overnight.
Gorringe is reluctant to divulge any specific details, but insists there are “exciting things in the pipeline”.
A Netflix-style documentary, and a clothing venture with Snoop Dogg’s Death Row Records have already been mooted, with the club particularly keen to tap into the North American audience that has served some of their rivals so well already.
“At this point, everything’s on the table,” he added. “We will consider all of the opportunities and we’ll try to find the best means for the club to move forward.
“If that’s a documentary, then great.”
The efforts to expand the club’s commercial ventures come on the back of various ‘efficiencies’ made by the club that Gorringe claims have helped lay down a more solid financial foundation.
“The club will be significantly more efficient going into the new season,” he added. “Changes in terms of our operations efficiencies have been seven figures and again, the way the PSR regulations work that is money that makes us more competitive on the pitch.
“The more money we’re spending elsewhere, the more money we’re not spending on the first team and that ultimately makes us less competitive.”
Meanwhile, Gorringe insists the academy, and its home at Landore remain a key part of the club’s vision for the future.
“Landore is a core asset for the football club,” he said. “It’s the only piece of real estate we own, and so it’s incredibly important to us. The academy has obviously been an area where there has been some change. We’re delighted to have Ryan Davies on board with us, rejoining the club.
“We’ve made some changes here at Fairwood too, with the under-18s moving across here. That’s a really important move as it helps us bridge that gap between that age group and the first team.”
Bringing through more young talent is, Gorringe acknowledges, likely to be a central part of efforts to improve their sustainability, but after some choppy financial waters, there’s a real hope that the club is now able to start climbing the Championship’s ‘Financial Muscle’ table, which last term had the Swans nearing the relegation zone.
The involvement of Snoop Dogg has clearly taken the optimism over the future to another level, and it’s hoped he will soon be welcomed to a game at the Swansea.com Stadium.
A date isn’t yet set in stone, but one can’t help but wonder if a certain tussle towards the end of December might well be a strong contender.