sugar
Swapping
daddies for shares
Three years ago a small group of supporters saved Lewes FC from financial ruin . Now entirely owned by 800 of its fans , the first team has escaped Ryman relegation and Lewes Ladies is challenging Spurs and QPR in the Premier League South .
Off the pitch the non-league football club ’ s iconic posters have become a cult hit and it has broken even for the first time in its 128-year history .
Charlie Dobres is one of the six Rooks125 who brought the club into community ownership in 2010 . He calls fan ownership the perfect antidote to the “ sugar daddy model ” propping up the Premiership . I met him in the one-room portacabin that serves as the club ’ s office .
Dobres says “ The season we got promoted to the Blue Square we were spending over 300 % of revenue on the playing squad . You don ’ t have to be an accountant to work out that is unsustainable . We spent money we simply didn ’ t have and almost went out of business . We can ’ t point the finger at other clubs because five years ago to get promotion that ’ s what this club did .”
Fan ownership is the perfect antidote to the “ sugar daddy model ”
Community ownership seems to be an idea whose time has come . Dobres gets calls from other fans wanting to take the reins , including one of the biggest
26 clubs on the south coast . After a recordbreaking 14 months in administration Portsmouth FC has finally got the green light to become the largest football club in England to be run by its fans .
“ It ’ s not alone , but Portsmouth ’ s a classic case in point . Spending money you don ’ t have and then paying the consequences later ... They ’ ve been into administration twice , but what ’ s happening there now is fantastic ” says Dobres .
While the success of the Pompey Supporters Trust has been welcomed by fans and the wider football community , some have suggested that returning to Premiership form demands a level of investment fans can ’ t provide . So can community ownership work for a big club ? Could it work in the Premiership ?
“ The easy answer is the four Champions League semi-finalists are all owned by their fans ” says Dobres . “ Barcelona and Real Madrid are fan-owned . Bayern Munich is 51 % fan owned and Borussia Dortmund ’ s about the same .”
In fact Germany ’ s Bundesliga has a self-imposed rule forcing every club to be more than 50 % fan-owned . Borussia Dortmund ’ s Chief Exec Hans- Joachim Watzke recently attacked the Premiership ’ s oligarch owners , claiming English football is in danger of losing