Since publishing my blogs on national non-league platforms, my readership has grown exponentially. In the past three weeks alone, I’ve been invited to appear on numerous podcasts and contribute to two national magazines. The focus? The general topic, failure of fan ownership at Lewes FC.
But now, as I research and write them, after the results of the most recent board elections, I’m pleased to say I can finally add a hopeful ending to the story.
It seems that after seven years of well-meaning directors earnestly trying to create a proper fan-owned club, and another seven years of directors who appeared more focused on building a so-called “worldwide brand” with disastrous consequences, we finally have a board made up of individuals who are setting out to do exactly what this club was always supposed to be.
They understand the values, the structure, and the soul of a genuine community club. And, crucially, they’ve made it clear that their agenda is to return Lewes FC to that vision. I rather suspect they will stick to this position.
In the autumn 2023 Mercury 13 ballot, Lewes FC achieved an impressive 42% turnout. Members voted by a margin of 2 to 1 in favour of a proposal that would have seen the socially driven Equality FC project receive substantial funding to heavily support the Lewes FC Women’s team.
Fast forward to the board elections results on 28 April 2025: turnout slumped to under 15%, and a wave of new board members were elected on a platform of returning to the core values of true fan ownership and representation at Lewes FC. This group of individuals had previously, at face value, opposed the Mercury 13 initiative. In just 18 months, the direction of the club has pivoted sharply, marking a major shift toward what many would consider a return to proper, grounded fan ownership.
No one, certainly not me, could have predicted that the independent candidates standing, many involved with the excellent Football Foundation, would sweep the board. But I am absolutely delighted they did.
Easy to say with hindsight, but it sums up just how low some people will stoop.
Over the past week, as the club tried, as subtly as a brick, to ‘nudge’ owners toward voting for their preferred Equality FC-aligned candidates, many of us saw it for what it was: an act of desperation, and a very distasteful one at that.
I sincerely hope the new board gets to the bottom of this behaviour. Whoever instigated it should be removed from any involvement in the operations of the club.
There’s nothing worse than sore losers. There is a lot of rot at Lewes FC, and it is time to stop it and root it out. This practice is totally unacceptable, and it is incimpetently engineered to boot.
The result leaves no doubt: the enthusiasm and interest behind Equality FC – which I wrote in a blog weeks ago had long lost its fizz – hasn’t just faded, it has evaporated.
The more than 600 members who voted in 2023 to promote Equality FC appear to have dwindled to just 100. One could reasonably argue that around 1,500 of the club’s 2,500 members initially signed up off the back of the Equality FC marketing campaign. Now, it’s fair to say that project has had its day.
The Equality FC concept, the brainchild of Charlie Dobres and Ed Ramsden, was a bold, admirable social experiment. But it ultimately failed. It was not adopted by national teams, and while it worked temporarily at Lewes, when originally operating both teams cost around £100,000 a season and was manageable, those days are gone.
Most crucially, Equality FC failed where it mattered most: on the pitch. It was a social experiment based on the claim that “we can do this.” But we couldn’t. Lewes FC could not sustain equal pay and keep the women’s team from being relegated. The result? A busted flush.
I didn’t know that then, but the haemorrhaging of Equality FC support and the club’s overall drift prove it clearly now. The interest has collapsed.
Perhaps it didn’t have to end this way. But let’s be honest: building statues at the Dripping Pan, giving out book prizes, and allocating community allotments aren’t examples of driving real social change – they’re gestures, distractions. Calling yourself a “fantasy global brand” only to find that 100 of your worldwide community turn out to vote in a board election… that says it all. Equality FC became a lot of hot air, clung to by a disconnected leadership that failed to realise the fanbase had moved on. Supporters were ready to return to grassroots football, something real.
To be fair, that fanbase had been remarkably tolerant for a long time. Perhaps too tolerant. That’s why this sudden collapse happened the way it did.
Lewes FC simply doesn’t have the resources to chase a global audience anymore. The experiment failed years ago and should have been abandoned then. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t aim for equal budgets, far from it, but, as I argued in my last blog (above), if Equality FC is to continue, perhaps the women’s team should be sold to investors and a more affordable women’s team started from scratch. Harsh, but realistic.
The men’s team drives the revenue and draws local interest. Meanwhile, women’s attendances have plummeted. Without significant financial backing, the club teeters on the edge of a financial crisis. It’s time to have honest conversations about how best to fund and structure Lewes FC.
This election result might be the best thing to happen to Lewes FC in 15 years. It may very well have saved fan ownership from a leadership that had become fixated on Equality FC, long after the project stopped delivering. Now, with at least four new board members focused on rebuilding a fan-owned football club, we have a fighting chance. It won’t be easy, but it will be real.
The truth is, the leadership at Lewes FC no longer had the momentum or resource to push Equality FC. If you’re going to champion a social brand, your outreach needs to match. No one reading the club’s marketing emails would have guessed there was even a campaign happening. The steam had gone.
The turnout yesterday was dismal. Most serious fan-owned clubs aim for 30% in elections; Lewes is now hovering around 10–15%. As I’ve always said, if Lewes FC had taken its democracy and elections seriously, not as an annual box-ticking exercise, perhaps the global Equality FC membership would’ve stayed engaged. But the chronic mismanagement of the brand since the start of the 2023–24 season has been its downfall. The leadership has been hoisted by there own petard.
As I’ve written before, the rot started when the club prematurely announced that Mercury 13 was “needed” because our players weren’t good enough – undermining the squad and leading to a disastrous start to the women’s season, from which they never recovered. That poor board decision marked the beginning of the end for Equality FC. And yesterday’s result marked its abandonment.
The Rights of Fans. 