As we await the results of the recent board elections (good luck to all candidates), it has become painfully clear, something I wrote about in my last blog, that Lewes Football Club is now a divided club.
While it’s not the time to dig too deeply, the division among our membership is obvious.
One side seeks to rebuild the club with a strong local foundation, driven by self-sustainability, local volunteering, and potential local financial support. The other wishes to continue using Lewes FC as a vehicle to promote the broader social aims of Equality FC.
Both sides have sincere ambitions. However, it is worth reminding ourselves: Lewes FC’s constitution, and the moral contract underpinning fan ownership, are based around a club rooted in its town and its local supporters. That fact is not incidental, it is fundamental.
To be blunt: we cannot afford to do both.
Rebuilding the club locally is realistic and achievable. It would bring in volunteers, rebuild relationships, and ease the immense workload currently shouldered by too few. People with the skills and commitment needed to run the club, like my wife and myself, are eager to step forward to support a properly Lewes focused community club. I have previously offered to rebuild the catering and my wife has just stood for the board, we presume she has failed!
Conversely, maintaining a high-profile international agenda, promoting Lewes FC Women and the ideals of Equality FC, requires significant financial investment.
And please, let’s dispense with the pretence: Lewes FC is not a global brand. Having 1,500 international members is an impressive achievement, but it is nowhere near what any rational definition of a “global brand” would suggest.
We are now a club on a financial knife edge.
At present, the club’s income streams are clearly divided. Lewes FC Men, supported by local fans and grassroots income, are keeping the lights on. Meanwhile, the Equality FC initiative can draw potentially large sponsorship through its values based messaging.
We have been warned that fan ownership is under threat and that, unless we change, we may need to dismantle our ownership model to attract external investment.
For those of us committed to the local vision, this is unacceptable.
This club belongs to Lewes. It belongs to its supporters. It belongs to its town.
The pursuit of major sponsorship for Lewes FC Women faces two unavoidable obstacles:
- Control: Investors are reluctant because fan ownership means they cannot control or independently run the club.
- Equality Principle: Any investment must, by principle, be matched between the men’s and women’s teams. Potential investors would be investing in Equality FC, not a standalone team.
The board understood this when they entered talks with Mercury 13. Although both sides claim to have walked away, the subsequent members’ vote saw record participation, largely from international members, who outnumbered locals by perhaps 2:1, and voted, by the same margin, in favour of what was effectively the beginning of the end for true fan ownership.
So there is now, in practice, an arguable mandate to sell Lewes FC Women.
If a viable proposal came forward, it would almost certainly be approved.
So Why Don’t We Sell?
Tony Streeter, during the Mercury 13 debate, on this blog proposed a practical solution:
- Lewes FC Women would continue to play at the Dripping Pan under new ownership.
- The community club would restart its own women’s team, rebuilding from lower in the pyramid but with infrastructure, experience, and reputation already in place.
Selling Lewes FC Women would allow serious investors to fund and grow the team without the restrictions of fan ownership. Meanwhile, Lewes FC Community Club could focus on rebuilding—both men’s and a new women’s teams further down the pyramid, for the town, by the town.
Right now, the Equality FC brand is fading. Without new investment, it risks becoming irrelevant.
Action is needed no to revamp it. We have already seen this season the gates haemorrhage; bold action is needed.
A New Beginning for the Community Club.
Without the burden of trying to be two clubs at once, Lewes FC could thrive again.
We have the DNA to be the best fan-owned club in Britain.
We already host the best Bonfire Night in Britain—why not the best community football club too?
With the right leadership:
- Volunteers will queue up.
- Local businesses will invest.
- Facilities like catering, events, and matchday operations can be transformed into real revenue streams.
- Lewes FC can compete with, and even surpass, Eastbourne and Worthing.
There is a need for urgent change.
At present, each side within the club is holding the other back.
It is astonishing that more people do not recognise this simple truth.
Are the leadership merely waiting for publicity grabs if there is a victory in the FA Cup prize money allocation, before acting? If so, that would be selfish in the extreme.
It is also notable that while Equality FC candidates were openly promoted during the recent elections, during the Lewes FC Holdings fiasco, Equality FC was barely mentioned at all.
Clearly, something is afoot. Or maybe nobody at the helm knows what to do.
The result of the board elections could be pivotal. If the pro-Equality FC candidates triumph, I don’t believe the club will survive in its current form unless financial matters are urgently addressed and fresh investment is found. Even with a more competent team previously at the helm, Equality FC failed for seven years to secure anything close to the level of investment needed to cover the costs it created. In the candidates’ addresses, while there was a commendable idealism that I support, there wasn’t a shred of realism about how it was all going to be paid for. Maybe the agenda is to break away and we are not being told. I stress ‘rumours’ suggest there are suitors, in which case why is this kept quiet? Oh, I address the person who says I am anti-women’s football below. You couldn’t be further from the truth.
At this moment, the club:
- Has no clear vision.
- Is riddled with internal division.
- Faces serious financial difficulties.
- Cannot pursue Equality FC’s broader social aims meaningfully.
- Continues losing the support of a previously committed local community.
- Crossing its fingers we get another fantastic manager to bring in the gates on bugger all funding.
The current strategy of tinkering and plugging holes is not sustainable. Going bust is a real possibility. Bottom of the table next season and attendances of 1000? Yeah right. We are on a cliff edge. A bad managerial appointment and it could be curtains. that is the brutal truth.
The leadership and new board must now present a clear, realistic, and ambitious vision—or risk losing everything that Lewes FC stands for.
The Rights of Fans. 