Birmingham City considered playing a League One match against Wrexham in the United States to capitalize on growing American interest in English football.

For the American ownership consortium, which includes NFL star Tom Brady, the duel with Hollywood-backed club Wrexham on the other side of the Atlantic was an obvious commercial incentive.

However, no official request has been made to the Football League after the club was unofficially told in recent weeks that such an idea would be flatly rejected.

US-based contractors and administrators have repeatedly expressed their hope of finally bringing a Premier League game to America next season.

But despite unprecedented viewing figures in America, both the top division and the EFL reject the idea of ​​playing any of their domestic competitions abroad.

Since Richard Scudamore, the former chairman of the Premier League, raised the idea of ​​a new “international round” in early 2008, not a single proposal has come to fruition.

That concept was torpedoed amid political unrest. In recent years, the Premier League has instead organized pre-season competitions in the United States. Wrexham, which has enjoyed two consecutive promotions captured in a documentary that accompanied its takeover by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2020, will return to America this summer after a commercially successful pre-season tour last year.

Birmingham, on the other hand, were relegated from the Championship in May after being taken over by US club Knighthead and Brady came on board as a minority investor a month later.

Sources familiar with the talks stress that the EFL never received a formal request and did not seriously consider the possibility of allowing Birmingham to play in America.

Organizers of the World Cup in the United States said last year they would “die” for the opportunity to host a Premier League match because the American market is more interested in English football than ever before.

Since 2013, NBC’s Saturday Premier League breakfast show has regularly reached over a million viewers and is said to have reached “40 million unique users” according to official figures. Independent research by Nielsen Sports estimates that there are now 30.6 million Premier League fans across the Atlantic. After being worth around $1 billion in 2013, the league will now receive $2.7 billion in the United States under a six-year rights deal with NBC Sports that ends in 2028.

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