Eisner warns Championship faces ‘catastrophe’ as Portsmouth accounts underline losses

Portsmouth chair Michael Eisner has warned the EFL Championship is on a trajectory towards financial “catastrophe”, saying the division’s business model is not sustainable for clubs without repeated owner funding.Eisner, the former Disney chief executive, said the gap created by Premier League wealth is creating systemic stress lower down the pyramid, with spending levels in the Championship driven by promotion ambition rather than underlying revenues.He said: “There are dark clouds hovering over the English football pyramid and it seems to me there could be a real collapse where only the Premier League survives.“Every single club in the Championship lost money last year. The combined operating loss of the 24 teams for the last full set of published results in 2023-24 was £411m.“No club can survive for the long-term in this system and if that continues, catastrophe will happen."If the forces that control the pyramid from the top tiers to the bottom tiers do not make football more sustainable and do it quickly, those dark clouds will deliver more soaking red ink beyond what one can imagine."Eisner’s comments came as Portsmouth filed their audited accounts for the year ended June 30, 2025, reporting a loss of about £4.4m after returning to the Championship and increasing investment in the playing operation.The accounts show the scale of the step-up in the second tier, where central distributions and media income rise sharply but are typically matched or overtaken by higher wage bills, squad costs and the broader expense base required to compete.Portsmouth’s figures were smaller than some recent Championship losses reported elsewhere, but they reinforced Eisner’s point that the division’s default position is deficit funding, often covered by owners in pursuit of promotion.The club has been backed by Eisner’s Tornante Company since 2017, with the ownership continuing to provide funding to cover operating losses and support recruitment, while Portsmouth also pursue longer-term revenue growth via commercial activity and stadium-related development plans.Portsmouth’s filings also highlighted a shift in how owner funding is structured, with the club moving from equity injections to shareholder loans during the period, a change that has drawn attention from supporters but which has been presented as part of a broader ownership and succession planning process within the Eisner family.Eisner’s intervention lands amid ongoing debate over the future of financial regulation in English football, including the sustainability of parachute payments, cost controls and the role of an independent regulator.For Championship clubs, the numbers have become increasingly hard to ignore: promotion remains the primary route to meaningful profitability, but the collective pursuit of that outcome continues to inflate costs in a league where almost every club is chasing the same prize.