Just a short train ride from Falmer station, you can find The Dripping Pan stadium, home to Lewes FC, the men’s team plays in the Isthmian League Premier Division, while the women’s team plays in the FA Women’s National League South. Lewes is a unique football club because, although they were founded in 1885, their modern history is what makes it such a unique football club in the English pyramid.
In a world where modern football is run by greed and corruption, Lewes FC is a refreshing change in the tyrannical world of modern football.
In 2017, Lewes launched the Equality FC campaign, where they equalised the resources and budgets that they allocate to their men’s and women’s teams, making Lewes the first (and currently still the only) professional or semi-professional football club to treat their men’s and women’s football players equally.
This paid off for Lewes. In the 2018/19 footballing season their women’s team (the rookettes) kicked off in the FA Women’s Championship, the second-highest division of women’s football in England and competing with clubs which have much higher budgets due to the success of their men’s teams such as Liverpool and Crystal Palace, who both had spells in the league during Lewes’ spell.
Unfortunately, The Rookettes were relegated last season and now ply their trade in the FA WPL Premier Division. But the story of Lewes signifies that when you apply equality and do the right thing in football, even if you are competing with clubs with bigger budgets, you will prevail, and that is exactly the case with The Rookettes.
The impressive equality measures that Lewes FC has in place are not the only remarkable thing about this football club. Lewes is a community benefit society, meaning that they are 100% owned by the fans, and any profit that the football club does make is put back into the club. The cool thing about this for managers of FIFA Career Mode or Football Manager is that anyone can become an owner of Lewes. For as little as £50 annually, you can become an owner of the club and become part of a movement that encompasses over 2,500 individuals from 40 countries.
The great thing about buying a share in Lewes is that the system is equal; you are only able to purchase one share in the club per person, so that the club is protected from people who do not have the club’s best interests or social mission at heart. Being a member and buying a share in the football club allows you to have voting rights (as long as you are over 16), with directors serving three-year terms, so at the end of a term, there are places available for election, allowing you to vote for a new director, or you can even stand for election yourself!
Football aside, you also get great discounts as an owner, such as a 25% discount off Lyle & Scott online and 20% off at Lewes Specsavers! As well as having discounts in great local businesses in Lewes, too.
If being an owner is something you would prefer to wait to do when you are off a student budget, that is not a problem! The men’s and women’s teams regularly have games, and with the Southern going towards Ore, stopping at Lewes, you can easily make a trip from Brighton or Falmer as a treat after a long week of lectures!
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