We are at a tipping point. The failed Mercury13 bid has shown us three things. Firstly, two thirds of the members voting on the proposal are happy to compromise the purity of our fan owned model for a fistful of dollars. This essentially questions whether the widespread fan base of Lewes FC are actually bothered about fan ownership. Especially as it seems the club leadership is not. This is not a criticism of those supporters, just a fact. Secondly, the fan owned model precludes any serious investment in the club (well let’s face it any suitors to the Lewes FC Women) as serious investors will want proper ownership to protect their investment. This is important. Just weeks after the collapse of the Mercury 13 proposal US businesswoman Michele Kang acquired rivals of a similar stature to the Lewes FC Women, the Lionesses, and is projected to invest large sums of money. Our leadership would die for that sort of investment. Michele would want autonomy. Thirdly, we are in the financial quagmire. This according to the 2022-23 Board of Directors.
The days of generosity from Ed Ramsden, the main advocate and funder of the Lewes FC Women, are signalled to end. Ed has generously and significantly covered the costs of both the men and women’s teams for the last couple of years. This comes at a time when the Lewes FC Women are facing two terminal challenges. Other teams with established funds, gravitas and large club infrastructures in the Championship are chasing the golden goose and are investing more and more money annually so that we cannot aim to compete with them, chasing us to the brink of relegation. The new arrangements of the WSL and Championship licences will effectively preclude the Lewes FC Women ever getting into the WSL. You can see why Mercury13 lost interest weeks before the licence announcement. We are a bust flush. We are being left behind. We have significantly less draw and kudos to potential investors than a year ago and this is a terminal decline.
Things have spun out of control chasing false dreams. Read later in the fanzine how the brilliant recommendations of the Tracy Crouch report, let’s put this diplomatically, are at ‘odds’ with the pathway the Lewes FC leadership have been following in recent years. Nobody on the Board has applied the brakes but have got sucked into a vacuum of vanity and ‘big club complex’ and followed a dream that will, and always was, going to end in disappointment. Elsewhere in the fanzine we will be questioning whether we should actually continue with the fan owned model. Most members aren’t bothered it would appear, especially as we lay very poor claim to being a decent fan owned club anyway, with the core aims of our constitution sidelined in pursuit of precarious glory. Why bother? Really, why even bother?
The 2022/23 Board, and the few before, in the opinion of the fanzine, have behaved in a breathtaking cavalier manner towards safeguarding the integrity and finances of Lewes FC, trying to create a platform for investors that they have not considered attractive enough to invest in. Bigging us up to be a game changing club and the ridiculous claim of ‘disruptors’ when in fact we are just a badly run non-league club – clueless, rudderless and crucially… bankrolled.
Coming in at the high level we have in the women’s game was only ever going to be short term, before other larger clubs pushed us out. The leadership at Lewes FC exist in a bubble where they think bigging us up makes us big. In reality, women’s WSL football at club level is as popular as Conference football, unless games are played at the main stadiums and our Championship has the same draw of Conference North and South. The fact is that whilst women’s international football is gaining mass interest, national football is not. Just like rugby union, a massive international game but little interest at national club level. Can you name a team in rugby union’s second tier? The Board have failed to read the room.
It was originally suggested from the offset of Equality FC that if the funding had not appeared within three years, it would be pulled. This was a sensible way forward taking a punt to see if sponsors and investors would be interested in. But as usual the leadership overestimated the potential interest and after three years the board should have just said we tried but the interest was not sustainable.
We have a new elected Board, some with good experience and manifestos. Sadly, some in their election addresses were continuing the party line of business as usual and working in tandem with existing directors who also seem oblivious to the possibility of the ruination of Lewes FC. The future is bleak, and I would advise you to enjoy the current bankrolled squads.
Below I will picture a worst-case scenario. Obviously other positive things can come along but do not write this off.
The countdown to financial disaster goes thus. A very rough approximation of our income is thus.
Turnover: £1,500,000.
Donations from benefactors: £600,000.
Sponsorship, FA money and TV money: £500,000.
Membership, gate attendances and concessions: £500,000.
2024/5. As far as I am aware funding is in place for the rest of the 2023/4 season, but next season the benefactors who have funded around £600,000 per annum, have said they will withdraw their financial support. There may be a change of heart, but you do not run a business hoping for a change of heart.
2023/4 or 2024/5. If the women are not relegated this season, they will be next season as there will be no budget available. We will then almost certainly lose our sponsors, for a season or two they may be contracted to continue sponsorship, but long term they are here because of the women and Lewes FC being a relatively high-profile club. They will go as the stock of the Lewes FC Women rapidly diminishes. Another £500k gone.
2024/5. Assume we can bank on receiving the £500k from attendance, membership and catering? Think again and half that because if you think when meltdown brings supporters and members are going to hang around out of the goodness of their heart? It isn’t going to happen, as we saw last time the club hit the skids, and they will be found missing in action. Attendances, membership and therefore catering income will haemorrhage.
We could rapidly go from a £1.5million income to £500k and that is being generous. When we joined the Championship, and the fanzine predicted the enormous costs involved we were ridiculed. But in time we have been proved absolutely right and the club leadership is out of touch with our finances. These are broadly sketched figures and excuses may be provided, but they may well prove in the right ballpark.
The Board have two choices, bury their head in the sand or realise the party is over and we need to significantly change direction. Great that a new working group has been set up to try and source local business support. But this is 14 years too late and merely scrapes the surface of the mess we are in. Having been ignored for all those years why would they want to come in and bail out a club that has seen them as surplus to requirements? And how do you sell it? We are desperately trying to get major sponsorship deals to keep the show on the road, but we will grant you permission to help out. You can’t swing it both ways. The Board have tried to get significant funding for the Lewes FC Women for six years and failed miserably and now the project is reaching its denouement we are even less attractive a prospect than before so all change please for a common-sense approach. Eschewing the local community and businesses is a long-term blight on the club and will take enormous endeavour to turn around.
The biggest challenge for the Board is not just the reaching out to change but to change the perception local people and businesses have of Lewes FC, and indeed change the perception of many fans that the club is toxic and in it for reasons other than being a community football club for the town of Lewes. Too many former Board members over the years have told me they realise the club has lost the town. The 2023/4 Board need to begin to turn that around. They will not do that and begin a common-sense approach to if they are still crossing their fingers a knight on his charger will appear and make it all alright. This approach never works in business. Dithering is a turn off.
The first thing they must do is to create a pathway to end the elitist running of the club. The ‘working group’ is a great way to bring really interested and smart people into participating in idea formation as a stepping stone for getting these sorts of people involved. A Board member on each group can feed the ideas and the strength of feeling into the Boardroom and really create a true and proper bridge between a previously out of touch succession of Boards, thus giving the fans a proper voice in forming the club’s direction. The appalling turnouts to elect Board members is not a proper democratic solution to fan ownership. Reaching out and really getting fans and members involved is proper fan ownership and trust me when fans feel they are not simply fed the party line, but are actually creating the party line the strength and participation at the club will improve dramatically.
But if the normal half arsed condescension and lip service to community ownership continues, people who can help out will not. There is no paid role in the club bureaucracy that couldn’t and shouldn’t be carried out by volunteers instead but unless the Board are serious about real significant change by their very nature the people who can help are not stupid and their involvement will be watching Lewes FC and not helping run Lewes FC. Working groups on sponsorship, membership growth, fund raising, community links, diversity and inclusion, match day experience, catering etc will help the club become a true leader in community ownership rather than a club entrenched in the misguided hyperbole spouted in the ridiculous ‘club strategy.’
We need actions to build a community club not beautifully presented pointless nonsense that is papering over the cracks of our slide into penury. If the Board chooses to do business as usual because they love the relative high profile of the club, we were there last time the funding went and most of the fan base simply walked. We became a basket case. Will the Board want to hang around? Some will. But the Board have a moral responsibility to make sure that when the fun stops and realism kicks in, the club is in a fit state. Simply hoping something comes along is not an option but is seemingly the preferred one? I will say in mitigation, most of the Board are recently elected and they have inherited a right old pickle, one of which I believe is a bridge too far for a group of people volunteering whilst also holding down real jobs.
It is time to grow up. For too long the club has been run with the luxury of somebody picking up the shortfall with absolutely no credible plan B. There is a short period still for Lewes FC to plan for the rocky road ahead. But I see the garbage in the weekly email and I see absolutely nothing akin to the necessary concern needed to plan for a crisis or raising the alarm. But don’t worry we are having a vegan day!
The last time the club hit the skids 18 years ago the men’s budget dropped from £400,000 per annum to £60,000 in two years. This is the reality of running a football club with the gay abandon we do at Lewes so expect the same soon.
The Rights of Fans. 