How ‘Ted Lasso’ turned a charming London suburb into a tourist hotspot

A Fictional Football Coach Is Reshaping the Tourism Map of West London

Healfromzero.com – Richmond-upon-Thames has spent centuries earning its reputation through royal patronage, Tudor architecture, and one of the capital’s most storied green spaces. The riverside suburb, roughly twenty minutes by rail from central London, was once defined by its deer-stocked parkland and the crumbling walls of Richmond Palace, a Tudor-era residence that predates the modern borough by several hundred years. Yet in recent years, a very different kind of visitor has begun flooding its cobblestone lanes: fans of a fictional American football coach who never actually coached a single match in England.

Apple TV+’s comedy-drama Ted Lasso, now deep into its fourth and final series, has turned the leafy Thames-side district into an unplanned pilgrimage site. The show, which follows optimistic American coach Ted Lasso — portrayed by Jason Sudeikis — as he attempts to rebuild a struggling English soccer club using nothing but relentless positivity and well-timed quips, was filmed extensively across Richmond. The result has been a measurable surge in international tourism that local businesses are still absorbing.

The Pull of a Fictional Town

Hotels and guesthouses in the area have logged roughly twice the volume of American visitors since the series debuted, a shift that has prompted local operators to rethink staffing, marketing, and even menu offerings. The draw is not subtle. Fans arrive with maps of specific lanes, pub names, and bench locations, treating the suburb less like a destination and more like a set they want to walk through.

Natalia, a viewer who traveled from Brazil specifically to walk the streets of Richmond, summed up the experience outside The Prince’s Head — the 1700s-era public house that doubles as the show’s “Crown and Anchor” pub:

“I just love it.”

For Natalia, the appeal extends well beyond the sport. She noted that while the premise appears to be about football, the substance is something else entirely:

“The first time you watch it, you think the series is about football. But the culture, the messaging — it’s about so much more.”

Walking the Set: Paved Court and Beyond

The geography of the show maps neatly onto the geography of the suburb. Coach Lasso’s fictional apartment sits on Paved Court, a narrow lane lined with window shopfronts — a delicatessen, a millinery, and other small retail units that have become incidental props in thousands of fan photographs. A short walk down the same lane leads to the official Ted Lasso merchandise shop, where visitors can purchase the red-and-blue AFC Richmond kits and boxes of shortbread labelled “biscuits for the boss.”

At the far end of Paved Court stands The Prince’s Head itself, a pub whose interior features regularly in match-day scenes. In the series, publican Mae Green, played by Annette Badland, keeps order among rowdy patrons during tense fixtures. Outside the pub, a wooden bench has acquired a second life as Coach Lasso’s signature thinking spot, where visitors queue for photographs that mimic the character’s contemplative posture.

Directly opposite the pub, Richmond Green stretches along the riverbank. The park, which hosted jousting tournaments for visiting royalty in earlier centuries, now serves as the show’s backdrop for Lasso’s solitary morning strolls. Visitors replicate the routine: coffee in hand, a slow walk through the common, occasionally pausing to watch a local kickabout match. The deer that have long roamed the green remain as indifferent to the new crowds as they were to the old.

The Waterfront and Its Oddities

Richmond claims the longest continuous stretch of the River Thames within London’s administrative boundary, and the waterfront has become a secondary focal point for show-walkers. The first date between Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) and Keely Jones (Juno Temple) unfolds along Richmond Bridge, a sequence that local buskers now soundtrack with impromptu performances for anyone willing to linger. Nearby, a puppet-theatre barge drifts at mooring, and one pub sits so close to the waterline that it floods at high tide; the landlord keeps a rack of complimentary gumboots by the door.

The Richmond Theatre, a Victorian venue dating to 1899, anchors the evening itinerary. In season one, Rebecca — played by British actress and singer Hannah Waddingham — hosts a charity gala there, and the building’s ornate interior has since become a recognizable landmark for viewers. It offers a natural closing act to a day spent retracing the show’s geography.

One notable absence: the team’s home ground, referred to in the series as “the dog track,” does not exist in Richmond. Match footage is shot at Selhurst Park in south London, the long-time home of Crystal Palace Football Club. Fans hoping to stand beneath the stands must travel a considerable distance west-to-east across the capital.

Guided Tours and Local Friction

The tourism economy around the show has formalized quickly. Ted Lasso Tours, launched in 2022 by Richmond resident Emmy Mac, now operates private and group itineraries covering twenty-seven filming locations across the borough. Mac’s clientele skews heavily American, though she has also hosted visitors from India, Singapore, and Mexico — a spread that underscores how far the show’s cultural reach extends beyond its original broadcast markets.

Not every resident welcomes the influx. Steve Lloyd, who has lived in Richmond since 1992, says he has lost count of the number of tourist photographs in which his face appears in the background. His own relationship with the programme is, by his account, brief and unimpressed:

“I tried to watch it — got 15 minutes in and thought, ‘this is crap.'”

Yet even Lloyd acknowledges that the economic and social ripple effects are difficult to reverse. The suburb’s identity, once anchored almost exclusively in royal history and riverside recreation, now carries a second, pop-culture layer that shows no sign of fading. As the fourth season’s premiere shattered streaming-viewing records last month — becoming Apple TV+’s largest single-night launch to date — Richmond’s cobblestones continue to fill with visitors who arrived not for the deer, not for the Tudor walls, but for a bench outside a pub where a fictional coach once sat and thought about how to fix a team that did not exist.