‘Running with the Wolves’ Star and EP Mark Consuelos Lauds ‘Ted Lasso’ and ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ For Doing the “Heavy Lifting” of Explaining European Soccer to US Audiences

Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa are no strangers to being in front of the camera. The Live with Kelly and Mark co-hosts, husband and wife of nearly 30 years, and media multi-hyphenates give viewers a taste of their lives every weekday on their daytime talk show. Now, the couple is taking viewers beyond their studio and into their home — and all the way to southern Italy, as a matter of fact — as they introduce viewers to another one of their ventures: co-ownership of an Italian football (aka soccer) club.

Running with the Wolves, a four-part ESPN docuseries that’s premiering its first two episodes tonight, follows Consuelos and Ripa’s journey with Campobasso FC. Since they bought into the club in 2022 — what Consuelos described as “one of the most fulfilling projects” he’s ever been involved in — the team, called the Lupi (Italian for Wolves) has been promoted from the league’s fifth division to the third division, known as Serie C.

“We thought that it was a good social movement to try to restore soccer for this town that was going to actually miss a season,” Consuelos told DECIDER of what inspired him and Ripa to share this story now. “It would be a crime not to do this. In talking about that, we were like, wow, this is a really great story.”

Nonetheless, Consuelos conceded that inviting cameras into their home “took a little bit of getting used to.”

“It’s not, I would say, completely natural to me to be that exposed,” he shared. But the showrunner, Mike LaHaie, and Left/Right, our partners with ESPN, they were great, and we work through it.”

Check out DECIDER’s conversation with Consuelos, in which he details how shows like Ted Lasso and Welcome to Wrexham have “done a lot of the heavy lifting” for Running with the Wolves, his hopes for another season of the new docuseries, and the meeting he had with the team’s Ultra fans when he thought might end up like Solozzo in The Godfather.

Warning: Some spoilers ahead for Running with the Wolves.

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DECIDER: What inspired you to tell this story now?

MARK CONSUELOS: When we bought the club with our partners (in 2022), we were in the fifth division. The fact that this city was about to lose their soccer team. The previous ownership had gone bankrupt, they left town. It’s like leaving this city, which had a rich history in soccer. We thought that it was a good social movement to try to restore soccer for this town that was going to actually miss a season.

At that moment, we were thinking this would be a great underdog story. But obviously the idea that us being in the fifth division at that time playing on these small fields in front of probably a few hundred fans… I didn’t think anybody, none of the streamers would be interested in that story at the time. But we were putting it together at that point. Our goal was once we got back up to the third division, it’d be a great time to take this project back out and see if anyone was interested in this story… And luckily, we begged [laughs] — we begged, borrowed, and stole — and ESPN was really enamored with this project, especially because it was Kelly and me really invested in this project, a project that Kelly thought was just going to be a silent partnership. But she soon realized that I was all in, flying to Italy a bunch, involved in every aspect of the workings of this professional soccer team, which I think, for me, has been one of the most fulfilling projects that I have ever been involved in.

Speaking of other projects, you’ve conquered soap operas, daytime TV, sitcoms, films. How did your experience differ with this kind of medium in comparison to these other kinds of projects, and what was your experience like shooting it overall?

We had produced a few sports docs in the past, one for ESPN [called The Streak]. It was about a high school wrestling team in Florida that had the longest winning streak in the history of high school sports, and we sold that idea. I’ve always loved that format, a sports doc. I love watching them myself as a consumer. The difference was I was never in front of the camera for any of those.

[Wolves] is very, very different than anything that we’ve done. Obviously the live show, it’s live, and it’s us talking, and so we’re on camera. But once you take those cameras kind of on the road with us, back at our house, it’s very different. It took a minute to get used to. It’s not, I would say, completely natural to me to be that exposed. But the showrunner, Mike LaHaie, and Left/Right, our partners with ESPN, they were great, and we worked through it.

The docuseries does kind of become a family affair. Obviously Kelly is also spotlighted, and your daughter’s also featured. Did involving family and this kind of side of your life make things more personal or intimate for you?

Yeah. This project is personal to me, super passionate about it. So if it was something that I wasn’t really so invested in, it would probably seem a little strange. But I think the aspect that it was something I was truly, truly passionate about felt organic to me. Kelly’s [laughs], I wouldn’t say… her maybe lack of understanding of like, “Why are you spending so much time doing this?” — you’ll see that in the docuseries — is completely natural and nothing’s recreated for that at all. She’s definitely scratching her head like, “Why are we so invested in this?” And my complete investment in it, I think, is expressed in a really, really natural way through this docuseries.

I’m not very well-versed in this world of Italian football. I feel like the only thing I could think of when watching this and hearing about relegation was Ted Lasso.

And thank God! You bring up a great point. I’ve been asked that in the past, and I think that Ted Lasso, that show did so much of the heavy lifting for shows like ours because the American public is now aware of this relegation-promotion thing that we don’t have in domestic sports here in the United States. It just doesn’t exist. I think it’s fantastic, actually. I think that the level of peril that you are faced with every season, it’s not just losing. It’s being relegated to a lower division. I think shows like Ted Lasso and even [Welcome to] Wrexham really explained to the American public in a way that became easy for them to digest. They’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for us.

I was fascinated by how intense this fan culture is. Towards the end of the series, it kind of reached a peak and they had the sign that said ‘Unworthy’ in Italian [Indegni], and you ended up meeting with these Ultras, these ultra fans. Can you take me through that experience?

The ‘Unworthy’ sign was directed towards the players, and I happened to be shooting in Italy at the time. I had met some of these fans throughout the process of just being at the games, and you meet with the fan groups. Like it or not, they are very much involved. So I decided to meet with them and just talk to them, and ask them what they were thinking, what they were feeling. And I happened to agree with everything they said. I felt like just for them to be heard and have somebody from ownership sit with them and have that discussion went a long way in having them feel like we are attached to this project. Because they’ve been burned in the past, where they’ve had ownership groups come in. They have a season, and then they go bankrupt, and then another ownership group comes in… I wanted to reassure them that we’re here for the long haul. That we hear them. “We hear you” is what I said to them. And we agree, and that some of the mistakes in choosing some of these players were fully ours. We made those decisions, and we own those mistakes… And they loved it. We hugged it out afterwards.

I will admit that I was a little concerned because the meeting was in the basement of a basement in a restaurant. It felt like The Godfather a little bit. But those guys are sweethearts in the end.

Take me through the experience of letting go of your coach [Piero Braglia]. What was your breaking point?

First of all, I want to say I loved our coach… I spent time with him, we had dinners. He is such a character. He’s hilarious. He’s a bit of a grump. And he’d been proven. He’d won the league, and he’d been in the playoffs in this division 10+ times. He was a legend. It should’ve worked.

It just became clear that the selection of the players, that he had a big part in selecting — usually the general manager makes all those decisions, but our general manager at the time was a little less experienced and gave a lot of deference to Coach Braglia to bring these guys in, and they just didn’t perform. I think that was probably, for him, the biggest mistake. He should have maybe not relied on some of these old players that he had luck with in the years past because they were past their prime. The decision became once you don’t win in over two months, there’s a problem. We were getting to the point where we were not just worried about making the playoffs, it was getting into this relegation zone — so we had to make a change. It was a tough decision, but we had to do it.

I feel like this series was really earnest and honest. It concludes at the end of a really tough season for the team, but you’re really optimistic about the future still and eventual promotion. Would you ever consider continuing this story, whether it be with another series or another film? Could there be another project involving the team?

Thank you for the compliment of what you saw in the show. I would say to you that we’re just getting started. This team this year is already better. We’ve made some new acquisitions, and they started training camp yesterday. They’re up in the mountains in Italy, and Matt and I are just champing at the bit to get back there and to see how this new squad and this new coach are going to perform. I think that if people like the first season, they’re going to love a second season, fingers crossed. We hope to do another season.

What do you hope viewers take away from Running the Wolves?

I hope that they can understand that this venture is bigger than just soccer. It’s about giving a town and a region something to hope for and giving them their team back. It’s about a group of Americans that are winning the trust of the locals. It’s about a husband and a wife doing something that they never, ever thought they’d be doing at some point in their life or their career. It’s about a region that not many people know about, and when they travel to Italy, I can guarantee not a lot of people go to that region. I think that if we can shed a spotlight on this town, on this region, I think that’s going to be really important.

The first two episodes of Running with the Wolves premiere on ESPN on Tuesday, July 29, with the following two episodes airing on Thursday, July 31. Episodes will become available on ESPN+ immediately after their linear airings.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.