The scaremongering. There is “no option but to sell,” really is completely untrue and totally misleading.
While the current board insists on this hard sell, the numbers tell a very different story. With the right plan, and this is just one of many out there, and without requiring a single pound in upfront capital, Lewes FC could swing its finances by over £700,000 annually, potentially exceeding £1 million if the full strategy is embraced. This isn’t speculative. It’s based on real, tangible ideas: trimming bureaucracy, unlocking income from underused assets like the 3G pitch, revamping catering and hospitality, and executing a proper sponsorship drive. Every part of this plan is either self funding or volunteer powered, and could begin delivering results within months, catering with immediate effect. In short, this is a high impact, low cost turnaround built on community energy and proven models, not fantasy. What’s missing isn’t money. It’s the will to act.
In the last year, I dread to think how many hours the board and COO have spent entangled in the Holdings Ltd debacle, and now what is almost certain to become another fiasco. The time must be pushing well over 1,000 hours, possibly double that, spent dreaming up and producing the amateur, misleading, and downright scaremongering content that regularly lands in our inboxes.
They make it up as they go along, spinning a narrative of despair, injecting fear and negativity into the club’s bloodstream.
Imagine if even a fraction of that time had been used constructively, inviting club owners in, asking for ideas, building a team of engaged minds to create a different future. We could have had strategy sessions, innovation groups, volunteer task forces, but instead, we’ve had spin and stagnation.
The claim that “there is no option other than part selling the club” because we are skint is not just defeatist, it’s dishonest. It is a cover for a lack of vision, a lack of planning, and a complete failure to engage with the talent and resources all around them. This isn’t realism. It’s inertia, dressed up as inevitability.
Simply, the leadership don’t know how to tap into community creativity. They don’t understand collaboration. They’ve confused governance with control. So they isolate themselves, reject help, and act shocked when the money runs out.
I commended the board in November last year when they said they were going to reach out to owners and volunteers to help rebuild the club, co-opt directors, and set up volunteer sub committees. I had been urging this sort of development in the fanzine for years. This would set up the platform for bringing intellect and ideas into the club, entrepreneurism, energy which all of course add significant monetary and community value.
The Myth That We Need Money for Ideas.
“We have no money for ideas,” was the board’s cry, shortly before they quietly jettisoned their own plan to engage volunteers. Instead, they launched yet another embarrassing investment attempt, Holdings Ltd Parts 1 & 2, a scheme that was actually ILLEGAL. Well done, that’s time well spent.
It’s becoming an obsession, isn’t it? And now we’re entering cock up number 3. How much more punishment can our lovely club take before it becomes a complete laughing stock?
Of course, you don’t need money for many ideas. Just look at the catering plan outlined below: a model with the potential to bring in millions over time. It requires no upfront investment. It would grow from its own profits. The only cost is in the labour of setting it up and for people like me, that labour is given freely, out of love for the club and the challenge itself. We don’t want financial reward.
Is this the incredibly simple principle the board struggles with? That people are happy, even eager, to take on big jobs and ambitious projects for nothing? Is that so hard to understand? Or is the real issue that fragile egos might get bruised if someone else shows initiative? Is it control freakery?
I don’t know. I genuinely don’t get it.
So, needless to say, the board bottled the only sensible idea they had. “Oh, we’re so busy…” they said. But again, that was the whole point of the plan: to bring help in so you wouldn’t be so busy. It’s just painful watching the incompetence. Doh.
These are just some of my ideas. But there are loads of other great ideas out there too. Have the board ever invited the owners in to ask for them?
We have around 2,500 owners. The board has 8 members, plus the COO. That’s a tiny sliver of the community they claim to represent. If those 9 have failed to fix things, why not open the door to the rest of us? Why not treat the owners as a resource not just a cash cow supplying £100,000 a year in membership fees?
Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp? Common sense.
These ideas might not be popular with everyone, and that’s absolutely fine. You don’t have to agree with every detail. You don’t have to agree with any detail. There’s maybe eight ideas here, collectively, but I know lots of other people are haemorrhaging ideas.
But see them for what they are: ideas. A vision. A refusal to accept that the only path forward is to sell off the club, a club built by hundreds of good (and yes, a few bad) people over many years.
I am just one of many people at Lewes FC who wanted to help. But we were shut out, this moment feels like the beginning of the end.
Putting Some Meat on the Bones
What’s really on the table, if we act with purpose, is a plan that could swing the club’s finances byat least over £700,000 a year, much of it with no upfront investment required. Let’s break it down:
Time to Tackle the Payroll Problem
We could save £150,000 a year, immediately, by ending the current overblown, ineffective, and overly bureaucratic payroll structure. Yes, redundancies have a human cost. No one should pretend it’s easy. But it’s essential. No club of our size, especially one turning over less than at least five individual Lewes pubs, should be sustaining a staffing model designed for a different era, one when the club was properly funded. That era is long gone. This arrangement should have been scaled back 2 years ago. We have volunteers, skilled, motivated people, who would do a better job for free. Not out of obligation, but out of love for the club. That’s the power of a true community club. Why are we not using it?
Unlocking Income from the 3G Pitch
We could generate £150,000 a year in new income from the 3G pitch, if it’s marketed properly and priced competitively, just below local alternatives. This is a prime asset. Every other non-league club with a similar facility makes solid revenue from theirs. But not Lewes FC. Apparently our 3g is cursed! Instead, we get constant negativity around something that should be one of our most reliable income streams. It’s baffling. With the right approach, this pitch could be working for the club seven days a week, serving youth teams, adult leagues, training bookings, schools, and events, but primarily as a significant income stream the former would have to work around the latter, we are a business. No business, no auxiliary teams. It is a simple equation.
The potential is sitting right there. We just need to use it. The facility needs investment to work, but kick in with some of the other plans, it can be self funded within a few months. The defeatist, well that won’t work, attitude has been overcome at every other club, Worthing’s 3g has been one of the reasons for their success. Remember why we set it up in the first place, why it didn’t work, poor facilities and overpriced, this led to neglect. Invest, make it competitive, focus on rebuilding it as a strategic income stream.
Catering and Hospitality: A Six-Point Plan Worth Quarter of a Million
See link to plan below.
A full rethink of catering and hospitality at Lewes FC could generate at least £250,000 in new annual revenue. This is based on a detailed six-point plan developed by experienced professionals, people who know how to turn food, drink, and matchday service into a serious income stream.
Two of those six steps cost nothing and could be implemented immediately. It’s not just theory. It’s a ready to go strategy being ignored while the club continues to operate with outdated, underperforming systems. We don’t need miracles, we need permission to act on good ideas already on the table.
Real Sponsorship Requires Real Effort
A properly coordinated sponsorship campaign, the kind Lewes FC has never attempted, could bring in between £200,000 and £500,000. That’s a conservative estimate based on the scale of opportunity available locally, regionally, and even nationally.
We have a strong brand, loyal fanbase, and a unique story. But none of that has been translated into a serious, strategic commercial drive. The potential is there. What’s missing is leadership with the ambition and bandwidth to pursue it with conviction.
That’s at least a £700,000, achievable within a single season. And if the full structural programme is followed through, we’re talking at least £1,000,000 in net annual gain.
Tell the Truth. Reclaim the Club.
Let the town, the fans, and the owners know the truth: we are in trouble. This isn’t just about begging for another handout, it’s about telling the full story. For the last five years, this club has been hijacked and damaged by bad actors. The time has come to reclaim Lewes FC, for Lewesians, for real fans, and for everyone who still believes in what a community club can be.
We need a sustained campaign, not a half-hearted push that fizzles out when results aren’t instant. At least three months of continuous work, momentum, and visibility. Previous boards have tried short campaigns that disappeared when things got hard. But hearts and minds don’t shift overnight. You don’t switch from Labour to Conservative off the back of a single pamphlet. It takes time. Repetition. Presence.
We need to bombard social media with the real story. We need people handing out flyers at every home game. There should be a presence every Saturday in town, and outside supermarkets, calmly, clearly explaining what’s happening to the club. We need professionals with time and skills to be co-opted onto the board. And we need volunteers to step forward into six functioning subcommittees, governance, commercial, operations, membership, community, and football.
And let’s be honest, many people will have far better ideas than these.
But only if you ask them.
Power to the People (of Lewes)
Here are some ideas for volunteer driven subcommittees:
Sub-Committee 1: Bring Back Business
Twenty years ago, Lewes FC brought in £100,000 in local sponsorship. In today’s money, that’s £175,000. The current figure? Just £40,000. That’s not due to lack of interest, it’s because the board has stopped trying. They’ve admitted this.
This subcommittee will organise volunteers to visit every business in Lewes and the surrounding areas, asking for sponsorship and inviting entrepreneurs to support a proper community club. Even matching the old figure would be significant, but this time, we’re talking about a coordinated, well organised campaign. If we do it properly, we could easily exceed £200,000, and potentially reach £500,000.
The business community wants to help. The club just hasn’t asked properly. When will Lewes FC realise it is a brilliant community asset, rather than the institutionalised negativity around, well, just everything? You have to work for things in life.
Sub-Committee 2: Matchday Messaging and Membership
This group will focus on what happens on matchday giving out leaflets, speaking to fans, recruiting members, and explaining what we’re building. Fundraising ideas too.
No more vague “One Club” platitudes. Let’s focus on Lewes FC openly, proudly, and honestly. And let’s finally aim for true 50/50 equality between men’s and women’s football, not the current 90/10 imbalance we pretend is equity.
Sub-Committee 3: A New Constitution
This group will design and implement a new club constitution based on the gold standard of FC United of Manchester. The aim: end the days of running our club with essentially a ‘flexible’ constitution that allow, pardon the pun, bad players to take it off on ill advised tangents and dramatically raise the level of competency at board level.
This constitution will guarantee:
- 75% member approval before any asset is sold
- A clear and fair election policy
- Total transparency, minuted board meetings, like FC United
- A legally binding commitment to 100% community control
This is how we rebuild trust and detoxify the brand. Local individuals and businesses who’ve stepped away due to mismanagement and disillusionment will return, when they know the club is protected and structured correctly.
It needs t be constitution that says, we are now open for you to dive in, rather than the secretive closed shop arrangement we currently have that is keeping the townsfolk and businesses from getting involved.
Sub-Committee 4: Turbo-Charging Equality FC
Let’s clear something up: those spinning the idea that people like me are “anti-women’s football” because we oppose selling off the club are either dishonest or completely out of touch.
Equality FC was the brainchild of Charlie Dobres and Ed Ramsden. It was radical, inspiring, and valuable. But now it’s being quietly dismantled. The core of Equality FC, equal pay for the men’s and women’s teams, is being downplayed and pushed aside. Don’t believe the excuses. It still matters.
Recently, I was contacted unsolicited by a senior media executive in the United States, someone who has raised over $60 million for global causes, works at CNN, and offered to help brand and scale Equality FC globally. For free. He even offered to be co-opted onto the board and lead a new, expanded subcommittee.
He submitted a 30-page proposal. I’ve read it. It’s brilliant. The board read it too. They dismissed it.
This subcommittee will correct that mistake. We can reignite Equality FC as a global brand, raising awareness, securing partnerships, and doubling down on our commitment to gender parity in football. And we will do it with the help of world-class professionals the board has ignored.
Catering and Hospitality: The Untapped Goldmine
Alongside three others — each with far more experience running major hospitality and event operations than anything ever seen at the Dripping Pan — I helped put together a bold six-part plan to revolutionise Lewes FC’s catering and hospitality.
The first two steps require no investment. Yet they would generate at least £250,000 per year in new revenue. That’s real money. On the table. Ignored.
You can read the full plan here:
🔗 The Dripping Pan Hospitality Plan
If you raise an eyebrow, ask yourself, have you ever run a serious hospitality business? Because we have. And what we see is inertia, inexperience, and wasted opportunity.
The Problem Isn’t the Club. It’s the Board.
These are just some of the ideas out there. But numerous others exist, just waiting to be invited in. Instead, the current board has closed itself off. It has become isolated and defensive, refusing to engage with the very people who could transform this club.
They’re not leading. They’re asset-stripping. They’re retreating. They’re using crisis as cover for inaction.
And the absurdity of it all? Right here in Lewes, for over a century, we’ve staged one of the largest community run national events in Britain: Bonfire Night. It’s run entirely by volunteers. It’s innovative, well-managed, and respected.
So how is it that Lewes can stage a world famous event every year with no paid staff, and yet our football club “can’t afford” to run two football teams?
The truth is painful. The board is sitting on some of the richest community talent in the country and refusing to use it. And when the going gets tough, their instinct is not to build, not to lead, but to sell.
That’s not leadership. That’s surrender.
A Case Study in Mismanagement
For future students of business, this board has produced what could be a dictionary definition of a busted flush.
If no investor is secured, and there’s every chance that will be the case, then the only realistic option to maintain our current level of operation will be to do a variation of what I’ve outlined above: restructure, mobilise the owners, unlock underused assets, and rebuild with vision and community at the core.
The tragedy is, people like me, and many others with skills, energy, and experience, won’t waste time engaging with a board who, while no doubt well meaning enthusiasts, simply don’t know what they’re doing. Simply walking around metaphorically blindfolded, looking for the easiest way out.
Why would anyone put time and effort into something that will just be mismanaged all over again?
Being on a board is about taking decisive decisions, speed, delivery and above all protecting your asset not preserving personal status, asset stripping or managing decline. It requires courage, clarity, and a willingness to act in the best interests of the whole community, even if that means stepping aside to let better ideas and more capable hands take the lead.
#Lewes FC #Lewes #Poor Management #Incompetency #No Vision
The Rights of Fans. 