Please read our previous 5 blogs and future 6 blogs here for Issue 20 of the Lewes FC Fanzine
The Lewes FC Fanzine 12 Blogs at Christmas. – Lewes FC Fanzine Blog (wpcomstaging.com)
Lewes FC runs at an enormous financial loss. 2021/21 accounts show £600,000 was needed to balance the books. It is unlikely any other club our size matches our losses. The losses for the season 21/22 have generously been covered by former director Ed Ramsden.
We have gone from having one of the best women’s teams in the UK costing us about £100,000 p/a due to the excellent Equality FC initiative, to having one of the best women’s teams in the UK costing and estimated £750,000-£1m.
Shortly after the creation of Equality FC, we were unexpectedly granted a licence into the Women’s Championship. This promoted us from tier 3 to 2. Impressive, from the top 30 in women’s football to the top 20. We existed on that £100,000 or so in tier 3, but with the new Championship licence came enormous financial conditions through the necessary payment of players and a huge backroom support team. This lifted our commitments exponentially.
It has taken us from being a nearly self-sustained football club to one racking up such huge losses that an endowment fund of huge donations to bankroll the club has had to be set up. The club needs to be privately financed which utterly compromises the values of our constitution. But the Lewes FC Women has totally transformed the club and established us as one of the best-known lower league clubs in Britain. Is it a price worth paying? We will look at the ramifications in later general blogs.
Make no mistake here. The brilliant Crouch Fan Led Review holds no punches about what Lewes FC are doing when it condemns clubs with ‘misaligned incentives to ‘chase success’’
The continued huge financing remains necessary if the Lewes FC Women are to continue moving forward, membership of the Championship is dependent on a polished, slick and highly professional set-up, the terms and conditions for inclusion dictated by the Women’s FA.
Essentially we now have two clubs and the club have acceded, two different sets of fans in the recent Fans Survey. Of course, there are supporters of both teams, I am one. We have a traditional non-league men’s team and a traditional support but a newer growing women’s team with a more diverse and less local support. Hence the men’s team is far better supported.
The attendances at the women’s games has at times been astounding, inconsistent, but I have to say more fun to attend.
Extra sponsorship, membership and increased gate receipts have helped cover some costs but not nearly enough.
Why the huge losses? Simple, women’s football believed it’s own press over reality of the hype around women’s football that it believed everyone else would want to pay to be a part of it, the money has not come into the game. This isn’t actually a criticism as this has been a general problem with women’s football. Poor leadership and belief incommensurate with reality.
Proponents’ of women’s football told us until they were blue in the face of the riches coming into the game after the last two international tournaments. I could have told them no chance.
The fact is even before the Tories and Truss flat-lined the economy there has simply not been an appetite to invest in women’s football which is getting, financing it is getting harder and harder to achieve. We have have picked up more sponsorship recently but last year again the staff numbers rose enormously, we seem to spend as fast as we get it.
What is interesting is how in many ways it has compromised and ruined the previous effort to become a self-sustained community club. It has seen the club go from focussing on the terms of our constitution to being wannabe ‘major drivers for social change.’ Again, we will examine in a later blog how even that seems to be a very much an all mouth and n o trousers effort.
Three huge questions arise that need to be asked.
Lewes FC is utterly limited within it’s archaic tiny structure and there ain’t nothing we can do about it. We may sit pretty at the moment but massive internationally recognised and huge household names in English football are on the rise. Newcastle United for instance below us in the National League are now investing huge amounts in there women’s teaml Over the next few years will the growth of women’s football simply blast us financially out of the running. The Crouch Review alludes to how clubs not affiliated to large clubs are at a distinct disadvantage.
Can Lewes FC go that extra mile and get into the Premiership where riches are not aplenty but the opportunities for huge sponsorship can see us compete. Like Wimbledon FC did in the top flight before they imploded and dissolved? This is probably our only real option. Or do we go the opposite way, resign from the Championship, drop a league and drop the huge costs but also the professional set-up that has been established.
Back to the beginning, is the initial offering of Equality past it’s sell by date. How important is it to our brand when money from the likes of Championship sponsorship and TV deals which other clubs may invest in their squads but we have to lose 50% to the men’s squad. Again the Crouch Review already noted the spiralling wage bills to the top of the women’s game.
The Rights of Fans. 