At what cost?

Lewes FC, Mercury 13, and the race for investment in the women’s game

On Friday 6th October, Lewes FC’s owners will vote on a proposal for investment into the club. Mercury 13, a new ‘multi-club ownership group’ are looking to invest $100m in women’s football teams, acquiring controlling stakes across Europe and Latin America, and they want to begin with a team in a picturesque town in East Sussex. 

Lewes FC have prided themselves on being run the way a football club should. Established in 1885, the Rooks caught international attention with the decision in 2017 to assign equal resources to their men’s and women’s sides as part of the Equality FC initiative. The Lewes men’s side play in the Isthmian League, Step 3 in the National League system, whilst soon after the Equality FC initiative took effect, the women’s team were accepted into the Women’s Championship. 

Their time in the Championship has been steady but unspectacular, finishing 8th, 9th, 5th and 8th in their four seasons in the division. This year, however, is looking pretty bleak. With five matches played, Lewes are yet to win a game. They have scored just once and have one point on the board as a result of a 0-0 draw with Birmingham City. The losses have not been run away victories for the opposition - only Southampton have scored more than two goals against them - but with this being the first year that the Championship will have two relegation spots instead of just one, it is looking rather ominous early doors.

All this is the context in which Lewes’ several thousand fan owners will vote on investment, specifically for the women’s team.

The part of the club that is 100% fan-owned currently owns the men’s and women’s teams. The proposal is that Mercury 13 would invest in order to receive a 51% stake in the women’s team, leaving the fan-owned company with a 49% stake in it. Assets like the name and the colours the club play in would continue to be owned by that 100% fan-owned company, but it is hard to really claim that the women’s team would remain meaningfully fan-owned.

It is hardly surprising that Lewes feel like they need investment. At the top end of the WSL, clubs are spending millions of pounds on their teams, and Lewes are one of only three teams in the Women’s Championship without a men’s club in the first step of English football. In the Women’s National League, clubs like Newcastle and Burnley are investing heavily in order to rise up the league system as quickly as possible. The decision to promote two teams - one from the North Division and one from the South Division, rather than having them play a play-off match for the one promotion spot -  indicates a desire to make that ascension quicker. 

The question is, though, what does that investment actually cost? Lewes’ stated desire is to reach the WSL, something that looks almost impossible to achieve right now without significant financial backing, even on a footballing level. That is before you even consider the additional spending which would be required to fulfil the licensing conditions to be a Women’s Super League team. But clubs like Lewes exist under the belief that there are values which are more important than chasing money in order to pursue the highest success possible. Values which eschew taking money from unknown sources in favour of having a democratic say in how your own club is run. 

Because it is hard to claim that Mercury 13 are a particularly known entity. The consortium is led by Victorie Cogevina Reynal who sold her start-up Gloria, an app which never formally launched, to OneFootball last September. Reynal became VP of Women’s Football at OneFootball as part of the sale, a role she resigned from within six months in order to “pursue women’s football as a priority”. Mercury 13 is run like a private equity fund, meaning that it is not transparent who the investors are, with a selection of board members, including people such as Eni Aluko who have been announced. Lewes would be their first investment.

Even beyond not having clarity on who they are, Mercury 13’s stated intention to build a multi-group operation feels deeply at odds with what a club like Lewes exists for. Their website claims that negotiations with first division teams in Spain and Italy are advanced, with Uruguay and Argentina their future focuses. 

Taken from https://mercury13.com/official-announcement/

The trend towards multi-club ownership has long been fought off by football fans concerned that their club is viewed simply as an asset. It is hard to read the description of Lewes by Mercury 13 on their website and not hear such objections in the back of your head. They are an investment group describing a business, focusing on sponsors attracted and ticket price increases. A brief sentence refers to their principles but there is little sense of what makes Lewes the unique club that it is.

Taken from https://mercury13.com/official-announcement/

The historic underfunding of the women’s game makes it tantalisingly open to external investment. Objecting to giving women the opportunity to excel at a sport they have been barred from succeeding in in the past feels close to cruel. Equally, it is hard to be enthused about the future of the top two divisions of women’s football being dominated by the biggest teams from the men’s game, but that is the way the wind is blowing. Is the solution to that really to sacrifice what makes those smaller clubs so unique in the first place? External investment does not immediately strip a side of its individuality, but selling a majority stake to an unproven private equity group that wants to build a multi-club ownership model sort of does. 

It is Lewes’ owners who will get to decide whether this is the right direction for their club, and it is admirable that they have the power to make that decision for themselves. This situation is one that is going to reappear in women’s football, as it continues to be a clear growth opportunity that will and should attract investment. Yet the form that that investment takes matters. Perhaps a football club that forms the centre of a community should not be used as part of ‘building a brighter world for [the founder’s] new born daughter’? Women’s football clubs deserve to be given the tools to succeed and that will often involve financial backing. It can also involve having an enthusiastic and dedicated fanbase with a stake in the club. Those behind this ‘opportunity’ might claim that this does both; it is tough not to feel sceptical.