Is the Championship heading for financial 'catastrophe'?

A total of £3bn and counting. That is also how much Championship clubs have lost in the past 10 years.

To put it into perspective, for that amount you could buy a pie and a pint at a game 300 million times over.

It would also get you about 760 properties in Mayfair in London - by far the UK's most expensive place to live.

Alternatively, it covers the cost of 12,000 typical houses worth £250,000 - enough to fill a reasonably sized town.

You get the idea.

With two second-tier clubs still yet to submit their accounts for the most recent year, that figure will rise further in the coming weeks.

Just three Championship clubs recorded a profit in 2024-25 and one of those, Stoke City, only did so because a £90m loan was waived by new owner John Coates to offset what would have otherwise been a £29m loss.

"No club can survive for the long-term in this system and if that continues, catastrophe will happen," warned Portsmouth chairman Michael Eisner.

"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."

Pretty stark words from the 84-year-old former Disney CEO who, at Pompey, oversees one of the clubs which has spent considerably less than most others to have played in the division.

So, has the financial bubble burst in the Championship? Or is it more a big balloon that has been slowly inflating towards popping point over more than a decade?

Fewer people will be 'willing to subsidise football'

"What concerns me is that we've become anaesthetised to the huge numbers which are involved," football finance expert Kieran Maguire told BBC Sport.

He added: "And that's now starting to drip down into League One, where the average annual losses have tripled from about £2m a year to £6m over the last couple of seasons.

"It will only survive if there is - like at present - a non-stop line of wealthy individuals or corporations that are willing to subsidise football.

"But that's what you're asking them to do, they are subsidising the game.

"The very fact that so many clubs are losing so much money is indicative of eventually, you're going to reach a point where there are fewer and fewer people who either have the money or the inclination to provide such an altruistic and benevolent approach to our national game."

Senior figures at Bristol City - a club owned by Steve Lansdown since 2002 which has recorded a loss in all but one season in his 24-year tenure and has lost £218m in that time - are brutally honest about the club's reliance on ownership funding.

"Significant."

That is how Robins CEO Tom Rawcliffe described the financial backing from the Lansdown family.

That almost feels like an understatement.

'Costs have spiralled beyond all reason'

When Championship clubs suffered a combined loss of £160m in 2008-09, it was a new record at the time.

Fast-forward to 2024-25 and - barring the anomaly of the season hit by Covid in 2019-20 which produced a record £450m loss - the league is on track for its worst-ever season in terms of expenditure.

Across a 19-year period since 2006, Championship clubs have lost a staggering £4.3bn.

And they have been steadily losing more money year-on-year, with a few particularly standout campaigns in 2012-13 (£318m loss) and 2017-18 (£327m loss).

The 22 clubs who have submitted their books for 2024-25 have lost a combined £317m, if you take into account Stoke's underlying numbers without the £90m written off loan.

Should the remaining two clubs continue on the same trend, the projected loss for the most recent financial year is £346m.

"The losses are very high," said Maguire.

"If you go back over the finances of the Championship for the past 13-14 years, probably on 10 of those occasions, the wage bill has exceeded the revenue generated.

"That's before you put 50p in the meter to put on the floodlights. The club is already losing money. So it is now a culture of overspend we've arrived at."

Eisner said his family are "walking headstrong into this storm" to keep the Fratton Park club going after a comparatively small £4.4m loss last season.

But he believes football needs structural changes to "protect the beautiful game for generations to come".

Pompey CEO Andrew Cullen agrees.

"We need to try to get some control over costs in the Championship which have just spiralled beyond all reason," he told BBC Radio Solent.

Desperation for Premier League status

The desperation for clubs to try and maintain or push for Premier League status has perhaps been demonstrated the most severely by Leicester City.

Of any club to play in the Championship in the past five years, the Foxes have spent the most, recording losses of £305.7m in that time.

Their overspending ultimately led to a six-point deduction this season for breaching profit and sustainability (PSR) rules in the three years up to 2023-24, which has put them at serious risk of relegation to League One.

Nottingham Forest (£189.8m), Fulham (£183.4m), Leeds (£154.4m) and Southampton (£107.9m) have also recorded significant losses since 2020, which perhaps shows that reaching the top flight is not necessarily a golden ticket to financial stability.

"Getting there is very expensive and dropping out is very expensive," said Maguire.

"So everybody's incentivised to overspend. That's why even Premier League clubs are reporting huge losses."

Four of the ever-present Championship sides since 2020-21 are also among the top six current second-tier clubs hardest hit by losses.

Bristol City (£111m), Preston (£84.4m), QPR (£82.9m) and Middlesbrough (£80.4m) have all failed to record a profit for five consecutive seasons - as have Derby, Millwall, Oxford, Portsmouth and Swansea.

Coventry City, who are on course to win promotion to the Premier League this season, have lost £29.5m in the past five years, while Ipswich Town are down £72.4m.

Maguire likened Championship owners striving for the top flight to "buying a EuroMillions ticket" with clubs chasing a TV deal worth £106m plus parachute payments in the Premier League compared to £12m in the second tier.

"If I'm a Championship owner, I know at the start of the season, in theory, I've got a one in eight chance of getting promoted," he said, which is in turn causing owners to "act like the the bank of mum and dad".

"They hand over money effectively unquestioningly, which is nominally a loan, but both parties know there is no chance of repayment.

"The owner of Stoke wrote off £90m, the Hemmings family in Preston put in £1m a month.

"And that now becomes the norm."

Will Championship face 'doomsday scenario'?

Simply put, while there are owners "willing to provide this level of subsidy, we've not got a problem", according to Maguire.

But, he said, the issues arise when owners walk away and clubs fall into administration as happened with Mel Morris at Derby in 2021 with the ex-owner saying he had lost more than £200m.

Similarly in October 2025, Sheffield Wednesday became the fifth EFL club to go into administration since 2019 after the club lost £200m under the 10-year ownership of Dejphon Chansiri - the Rams, Wigan, Bury and Bolton are the others to do so.

The Owls were docked 18 points this season as a result of regulation breaches and their relegation to League One on 22 February was the earliest in the history of the English Football League, while they also face a potential further 15-point deduction next season.

"We've had this doomsday scenario mentioned on multiple occasions over the last 15 to 20 years," added Maguire.

"It does create a very precarious industry.

"I can't speak on behalf of the regulator but certainly reading some of the pronouncements, if owners collectively stopped subsidising the clubs, the vast majority of them would run out of money within six weeks.

"That's no way to run a business."