A picturesque London suburb feels the Ted Lasso effect

[RICHMOND-UPON-THAMES, ENGLAND] In the West London suburb of Richmond-upon-Thames, the herd of deer from the royal park sometimes stops traffic. Georgian houses with column-framed doorways line leafy streets. Rented rowboats drift on the river. Cricket has been played on the green in the centre of town since the 17th century.

In more recent years, tourists and influencers have gathered on a paved area by the green to take photos of some unassuming local attractions: a pub, red phone booths and a bench.

This area is known locally as “Ted Lasso corner”, and it is the site of many big-hearted moments that characterise Ted Lasso, the hit Apple TV show whose fourth season premiered on Wednesday (Aug 5).

When Brendan Hunt and other creators started working on a show about an American coach working with a London football team, what they pictured was “not Richmond at all”, Hunt said in a recent video interview. Instead, he said, they were thinking about capturing “grimy football culture”.

But once the team scouted locations and chose the “quite heavenly” Richmond, “suddenly we were writing a lot more disgustingly, grotesquely rich characters”, Hunt shared.

The green also became “the heart of it to me, energy-wise”, Hunt said. Along with Ted Lasso corner, it is a site of pilgrimage for fans who connect to the show’s messages of empathy and hope.

Among them is Pete Bombaci, who sat under an umbrella outside the pub on a recent sunny afternoon to eat fish and chips with his partner, Shelli Baltman, 53. When he was planning a London trip from Toronto for his 60th birthday, coming to Richmond “was a must”, he said.

Seeing Richmond in person was special, Baltman noted. “We love this place, and we don’t know it at all. We just know it from a screen, but there’s that connection there.”

The couple estimated that they and their 11-year-old son had watched the first three seasons of Ted Lasso five times. “I have been moved and motivated and inspired by the show,” Bombaci added. The show’s message that “we need each other to survive, let alone thrive”, he said, aligns with the ethos of GenWell, a charity that he runs promoting human connection.

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For Rushabh Shah, 24, who lives in Mumbai, and had come to Richmond for the day to see the Ted sites, the show’s central mantra of “believe” – in yourself, in the people around you – was key.

“It’s very hard for it to not resonate,” he said. “It’s such a simple, basic idea.”

In season one, Ted writes the word in blue capital letters on a yellow poster in the team’s dressing room. Shah bought a sign and a T-shirt in that style from the nearby Ted Lasso store.

While many shops in Richmond sell unofficial Ted-themed items, the official store is licensed by Warner Bros. Cousins Ella Tynan and Thomas Durcan opened it in December 2024, a few doors down an idyllic cobbled street from Ted’s apartment on the show.

The shop ships its products – including soccer scarves, personalised jerseys and “biscuits with the boss” socks – worldwide, but Tynan estimated that 80 per cent of sales came in store.

“Because of the nature of the show, it’s very personal to a lot of people,” Tynan said. In the shop, the slogans and cartoons of the characters that line the walls have become prime selfie backdrops, and customers often strike up conversations about their love of the show.

Ted Lasso premiered in 2020, and it can be hard to measure the extent to which increased foot traffic in the centre of town is thanks to the show or to the return of retail after the Covid-19 pandemic.

But since the show began, Richmond hotels have reported up to twice as many American guests, according to Eleanor Miller, the marketing and communications manager at Be Richmond, a nonprofit that supports local businesses. There’s no doubt that the show has “attracted tourism into the town centre”, she added.

Billy Hull, 31, the assistant manager of the Roebuck pub at the top of Richmond Hill, agreed. Recovering on the green after England’s World Cup semi-final loss to Argentina the night before, Hull said that the many Ted Lasso tourists, mostly American, who visited his pub were easy to spot by their red-and-blue soccer jerseys and bags from the Ted Lasso store.

In 2022, Emmy Mac started noticing that a lot more Americans were visiting her hometown. Realising that they had come for Ted Lasso, Mac binge-watched the show while breastfeeding and fell in love with it, she said recently by phone. Inspired by TV and film locations that she had visited in the US, Mac started offering tours of 26 filming locations in Richmond.

Today, Mac runs up to three tours on Sundays and private ones on other days. She estimated that 90 per cent of the people on the private tours were from North America. Mac said that she had been surprised by the level of interest, and that the tours generated more income than she had expected.

“I try to do everything with Ted’s heart,” Mac said. So she thinks about keeping the locals happy, including running the general tours on Sundays to avoid clogging the pavements during the working week. A tour she recently added on Wednesday mornings during the summer will not happen next year “if I get feedback from locals that this is too much”, she said.

According to Gareth Roberts, the leader of Richmond Council, “most people do recognise the benefits” of Ted Lasso. It is a “balance”, he added by e-mail, to make sure locals do not “feel their neighbourhood exists purely as a film set or tourist attraction”.

On a recent afternoon, some residents seemed unbothered by the “Ted Lasso effect”. Sunil Chityal, a chartered accountant who has lived in the area for 25 years, said that he had not noticed a significant change in the feel of Richmond as a destination, adding that the show was not a “conversation piece” locally.

Part of the reason may be that the borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, a picturesque setting with several royal palaces within easy reach of central London and Heathrow Airport, has long had a steady average of 4.5 million visitors a year, according to Miller.

And in contrast to some previously obscure destinations that are now experiencing an influx of visitors – like Goodwood, Ontario, where Schitt’s Creek was filmed – Richmond has been a location for numerous other shows and movies, including Bridgerton and Shakespeare in Love.

Still, Hunt, who also plays assistant coach Beard, said that when it came to the centre of his beloved Richmond, “I can’t quite show my face as freely there anymore as I might have done a few years ago.”

He added: “It’s not as easy to walk up High Street as it used to be.” NYTIMES