At Lewes FC in our seemingly never ending failing quest to pick up some serious sponsorship to cover the enormous operating losses caused by the Equality FC initiative, a lightbulb moment occurred.
Lewes FC, the great self publicists of non league football, are doing exactly that again. At the club we have a tremendous pool, of marketing and media savvy. Hence our Equality FC initiative is quite well known in the clique of women’s football.
Unfortunately, the publicity has so far resulted in ‘ongoing discussions with sponsors’ for 18 months. Secret code for failed.
Lewes FC have been perfectly honest in saying Equality FC is both a politically and business venture. The politics to help highlight the gross division in financial between the men’s game and ladies game. The business is hoping the publicity will help bring much needed sponsorship and funding to the club.
A couple of weeks ago the latest publicity stunt was revealed. An ‘open letter’ to the FA stating (I found the sickly presentation misguided) how unfair it is that the prize money over the mens and women’s tournament is split 99 to 1. Quite bloody right to highlight this. It is despicable.
https://www.lewesfc.com/article/an-open-letter-to-the-fa-board-time-to-close-the-fa-cup-prize-gap
Lewes thought they were onto something and said that we would be hearing a lot more about this. Clearly it was believed this was something everyone in football could agree with. Outrage.
Skilfully the FA swatted the letter away. The resources were allocated according to weight of sponsorship income which was practically all via the men’s. Besides, they added, we have just invested 18 million pounds in the women’s game. The furore of anger at the injustice and the accompanying publicity never arrived. It flopped.
I felt quite outraged at the gross gap in prize money and looking at the list of prize money for both men and women, yes the figures are mind boggling between the genders. But then I thought wait a minute.
Are Lewes FC forgetting they have a men’s team ? Because while the gender gap is enormous in the prize fund so is the gap between the earlier rounds of the FA Cup, which Lewes also feature in, and the finalists.
When the FA are swatting Lewes away with their gender excuse and why the men’s game deserve 99% of the prize fund why are Lewes not going back and saying in that case why the massive gap between the victors in the early preliminary rounds and the finalists. Why do the 184 winners of the extra preliminary rounds only receive £2,250. A pool of £500,000. A further 5 rounds in and it gets no better. The 40 third qualifying round winners receive £15,000. A pool of £600,000. Yet the pool for the final round is £5,000,000. A puddle of piss to the giants of the game. Not enough to pay one of their players for a year.
The finalists get ten times more prize money than the collective mass of clubs in the earlier rounds.
Anyone involved in non league knows if there was parity of rounds and the winners of the earlier rounds received £22,500 and not £2,250 it would be an enormous boost to the development of non league.
It raises two points re Lewes FC.
Why spend all that energy just attacking the FA over the women’s prize fund when there is a fundamental case for change through the whole tournament. As brilliant as it is that we have highlighted the gross inequality in the women’s game you are highlighting a sporting injustice to a limited audience. Nobody took any notice.
Why not use some savvy with all that marketing and media talent at Lewes and get all non league clubs on side and expose the disparity here. This really would gain the momentum the ‘open letter’ failed to garner. We may even get loads of new people signing up as members too as well as maybe a larger FA Cup pot in future competitions if successful
Which leads to the second point. Equality FC. I think the Board have lost sight of what we are supposed to be. A gender equal club. Seems to me so much energy is now being spent on promoting the women’s cause, rightly so. But the men’s side of the club, as above represents, is being neglected.
The BBC are keen to promote what we are doing at Lewes but we seem to be just flogging a dead horse. With certain large media streams happy to promote our equality campaign why didn’t we chuck in the disparity of rags and riches in football.
Make no mistake. The FA Cup is the people’s cup because of the non league minnows and the interest they bring to the competition. These clubs deserve a larger slice of the prize funds.
I have posted another blog today about Lewes FC.
https://july66blog.wordpress.com/2019/02/14/lewes-fc-the-football-rebels-without-a-clue/
The Rights of Fans. 