Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney join investors buying into Alpine F1 team

June 27, 2023

The actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney—flush with the success they have brought to Wrexham AFC football club—are expanding their sporting portfolio with an investment in the Alpine Formula One (F1) team, reports The Guardian.

Having been central to the most unlikely rags-to-riches story documented in the enormously popular TV show Welcome To Wrexham, their part in a £157 million (US$199 million) stake in Alpine is hoped to reap a similar reward in F1 which is enjoying a resurgence in global popularity.

On Monday, June 26, Alpine, based in the UK at Enstone in Oxfordshire—and owned by the car manufacturer Renault and branded after its sportscar range—announced they had sold a 24% stake in the team to a consortium of investors.

They include Reynolds, the actor best known for his role in the Deadpool films, and McElhenney one of the lead actors in long-running sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. The pair have also been joined by co-investor Michael B Jordan, the lead in the Rocky spin-offs, the Creed films.

Reynolds and McElhenney already had enjoyed a remarkable success story with their investment in Wrexham. In 2021 the pair purchased the struggling north Wales club then competing in the National League, the fifth tier of English football. The pair wanted to set about transforming the club’s fortunes and filmed their efforts to do so for a documentary series. In April of this year Wrexham secured promotion to League Two, after a 15-year absence and Disney announced they were to release a second season of the series.

Neither actor had any experience in running a football club but, emboldened by their success, have chosen to expand into F1 with Alpine, a team with ambitions to make its own step up into the top levels of the sport. There are no plans yet announced of a series to document their efforts, but F1 already enjoys its own season-long soap opera in the form of the Drive to Survive series on Netflix.

Drive to Survive—which was first shown in 2019 covering the 2018 season and with a focus on editing the stories to give a dramatic emphasis—has proven to be enormously popular. It was renewed last year for its fifth and sixth seasons; and has played a key role in the sport’s expansion in the United States, where it is enjoying a popularity not seen for decades. This year F1 will host three U.S. races—in Miami, Austin, and Las Vegas—with the latter promoted by F1’s owner Liberty Media.

The investment in Alpine by Reynolds, McElhenney, and Jordan and their involvement in attempting to turn around Alpine’s fortunes is a storyline ready made for dramatization—and one which will, doubtless, appeal to the burgeoning U.S. market.

The new deal is expected to leverage the experience of the investors in sporting franchises. The U.S.-based group includes the Maximum Effort Investments group of Reynolds, McElhenney and Jordan; Otro Capital; and RedBird Capital Partners, which owns the third-largest stake in Fenway Sports Group (owner of Liverpool FC and the Boston Red Sox baseball team).

That they feel confident of a return is a reflection of F1’s rude health. For years, owning a team was a hugely expensive exercise—a money pit justified by major manufacturers for marketing. However, under Liberty Media, the model has been transformed. They have increased the sport’s popularity and, with the imposition of a budget cap, have made the initial moves to compete profitably.

The value of teams is now on a sharp upward curve. As part of the sale of stock, Alpine was valued at US$900 million.

Research contact: @guardian

Sepember 12, 2024

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in back in September 2016 that one in four Medicare participants age 65 or older—that’s 5 million people—do not take their blood pressure medicine as directed. In fact, 20% to 30% of prescriptions for chronic health conditions are never filled, and about half are not taken as prescribed, reports the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

Patients’ failure to follow their medical treatment regimens is a common and costly problem with potentially dire consequences. A 2012 study by the American College of Preventive Medicine found that nonadherence accounted for an estimated 125,000 deaths annually and at least 10% of hospitalizations. The repercussions also cost the U.S. health system as much as $300 billion a year, according to a 2014 study by Johns Hopkins University researchers.

Depending on the patient, provider, and situation, contributing factors may include the patient’s social and economic status or education level, the complexity of the treatment and instructions, health system variables, poor provider communication, patient depression or stress, or physical or financial obstacles to drug access.

Patients may also stop taking a medication if they experience unpleasant side effects, are not seeing any immediate benefit from the therapy, or if they simply grow tired of taking pills.

medicine we have a blind spot,” said Victor Montori, M.D., an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic. “Being a patient—especially being a patient with a chronic condition—is a lot of work.” And there’s no curriculum about the work of being a patient, he noted.

Adherence rates haven’t changed significantly in the past three decades, despite efforts by the World Health Organization and the Institute of Medicine to address the problem, according to the American College of Preventive Medicine.

In addition to poorer patient outcomes, hospitals now also suffer the costs of readmission penalties for Medicare patients who return to the hospital because they haven’t followed a doctor’s instructions.

There’s no one-size-fits-all remedy for this problem: physicians and health systems can support adherence in a combination of ways.

At Mayo’s Knowledge and Evaluation Research Unit, Montori focuses on “minimally disruptive medicine” that is designed not to overburden patients. He said clinicians often are unaware of the cumulative effects of what they ask patients to do. Montori noted, for example, that patients may have to go through several bureaucratic steps and pharmacy trips to refill each maintenance prescription.

Montori suggests that healthcare systems focus treatment on the goals patients and clinicians agree to achieve, “and then make sure in the process that we don’t overwhelm [the patients].” In some cases, it’s virtually impossible for patients to do all that their providers ask, Montori says. “Are the treatments, tests, appointments, that we’re asking people to go through, are they really necessary?” he asked. “If we medicalize every moment of their lives, patients will struggle.”

In addition to being more judicious about how many appointments are necessary, the healthcare team can make it easier for patients by trying to bundle appointments or procedures on the same day, he suggests. Or clinicians can help mobilize social resources for patients who need help with housing, food, or addictions—factors that can affect their ability to maintain a treatment regimen, Montori said.

Prescribing more affordable generic drugs, simplifying dosages, synchronizing refills, and finding ways to reduce pharmacy trips may reduce the burden on patients as well, Montori adds. Or, if the patient has stopped taking a medication because of unpleasant side effects, the physician can work with the pharmacist to find an alternative.

At NYU School of Medicine, Adina Kalet, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and surgery and codirector of the Program on Medical Education Innovation and Research, is exploring the use of a Patient Empowerment Program to help patients become more active partners in their care. In a current study, she and colleagues are training patients with diabetes to better communicate with physicians during two two-hour sessions.

So far, said Kalet, “it does what we are hoping it [would do]…. It changes the dynamic in the doctor’s office. We’ve had nothing but positive responses from physicians about how much more satisfying it is to be able to engage as partners with patients.”

For Steven Feldman, MD, PhD, professor of Dermatology, Pathology, and Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, close follow-up and establishing trust with patients are the keys to patient adherence. Prescribing a drug and then following up in 8 weeks to 12 weeks is not enough to ensure compliance, he says.

“Doctors are the only people on the planet who have the idea that you can tell people, ‘Here, work on this every day and I’ll see you in two or three months.’”

Feldman has found that being a caring provider leads to better patient accountability. When prescribing a new treatment, for example, he writes his mobile phone number on a business card and tells his patient to call in three days to report on progress. “That adds to their trust in me, which adds to their trust in the medicine,” Feldman says.

Wake Forest has spun off a company based on Feldman’s adherence-improvement methods, asking patients to report their treatment status through online surveys. Using that approach, acne patients doubled their adherence to treatments.

Providers may do well to remember that the intangible can be invaluable. “It is the relationship between the doctor and patient that drives the compliance,” says Helen Shields, MD, associate chief of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Division of Medical Communications.

“I believe strongly that patients are more compliant if they trust you, believe you, and if they can understand what you’re saying.”

Research contact: @AAMCtoday