As ever the enormous hype about the explosion in interest in the women’s game after 2022 was very much exaggerated. Figures in the Guardian newspaper show the healthy continued growing interest in the sport, but realistically until the FA dictate games must be played in the participants main stadiums attendances this season will rise from the National Conference level of last season to that of the old division four.
However, the growth and investment, slow as it is, is very much happening and it is surely only a matter of time before the FA decide to qualify for a licence for participation in the top two tiers of women’s football home games must be played at the club’s main stadiums. Only occasional showpiece games are currently played in main stadiums but with around 60,000 due at the Emirates this weekend for the north London derby this will see the game explode financially.
Equality FC is the moniker behind the spiralling growth of Lewes FC. Launched five years ago and regarded as a gimmick at the time, so small was the budget of the Lewes FC men in tier 8 of the football pyramid it was with absolute ease to be the first football club to introduce wage parity to the agenda. Our men and women’s teams receive commensurate financial renumeration. A really small risk to create an enormous amount of interest.
What certainly has been no gimmick is the masterful way the club has grown Equality FC, the women’s side of the club and the club in general. For me the priority of being a community club is always to aim for being self-sustained and the rapid growth of the club has very much dragged us away from that aim. The pay-off has been large new income streams from sponsorship and tv money that has increased the playing budget for both the men and the women, the profile of the club raised enormously going from also rans to pioneers of women’s football and the force for good driving gender equality and investment in the club infrastructure, the FA’s recent £750,000 grant to upgrade the pitch entirely on the back of the Equality FC.
The jeopardy is the reliance on these new income streams for not just the players, but the huge wage demands of the staff required to run the women’s set up under the FA Licence arrangements.
The fear is that Equality FC has a sell by date, and it is soon and when it catches up with Lewes FC financial ruin could be around the corner. Make no mistake the loss of these new income streams if we drop out of the ‘lucrative’ top two tiers will create such a huge trading loss the whole club structure will fall apart.
The maths is simple and scary.
We are one of three minnow club amongst the big boys, the last game of last season was against Liverpool FC. You have to pinch yourself sometimes. But as more money comes into the game the more the playing budget required. Growth in women’s football is slow but very much tangible. Already dealing with a relatively archaic infrastructure at Lewes compared to our peers we will have the huge disadvantage of half of the income and financial rewards of the Lewes Women redistributed to the men through the budget parity commitment. In short, we will be handicapped by budget parity. At the current low levels of wage costs, it easy to patch over the differential funding with our rivals through the superb effort of the club to compete. But endeavour and smart management can take you so far. Eventually as the stakes grow higher money and budget will become the kingmaker and Lewes FC will be giving 50% of the growing sums of money from the FA, sponsorship, and TV to the Lewes men as every other rival team retains 100%. Okay it is not all as simplistic as that, but basically in principle it is. The more the sport grows the more the women’s budget will be penalised and the larger the advantage our competitors will have over us.
Will Lewes FC reach a tipping point whereupon to compete it will have to drop Equality FC? I firmly believe so. Equality FC brings in huge advantages, it has been entirely responsible for Lewes being invited into the Women’s Championship according to my correspondence with one of the heads of the Women’s FA when we awarded a licence. She told me we are cut a lot of slack on some of the demands of the licence because of what we stand for. This is something of merit. Most of the sponsorship we receive is on the back of budget parity, it has that advantage, but that can only go so far before we are unable to compete properly.
Will being a ‘pet’ of the FA and will sponsorship, much of which seems to be based on our stance on budget parity, go tits up if we drop budget parity. Is there an alternative plan? Quite possibly so, although it is difficult to see Lewes FC pulling two rabbits out of the hat.
So, enjoy it while it lasts, the irony being as much as the people in charge of Lewes FC crave for more investment in the women’s game, the faster and higher that is the quicker it will bring about the demise of the current model at Lewes FC. With the club so reliant on the financial windfall of the surge in women’s football I’d suggest the slower the growth in women’s football the longer we can compete at the top table. Be careful what you wish for. We are completely sustained on the Equality FC model and we will soon be priced out of the game and have no other major income streams to fill the gap other than cutting our cloth through huge redundancies and the slashing of all budgets and expenses taking us back to where we were before.
Equality FC is the one triumph of community ownership at Lewes FC, but I fear the days maybe numbered.
The Rights of Fans. 