Success… at any cost. That’s generally not the mantra of a business with a long and fruitful future, but in football it has increasingly become the norm over the past few decades.
And while the poison of success at any cost had been exclusive to the Premier League for many years, now – in the wake of the ‘Hollywoodisation’ of clubs like Wrexham and Birmingham City – it’s beginning to seep into the EFL pyramid as well.
A new study has found that Championship clubs have lost a combined £3 billion over the past decade in the battle for Premier League promotion – while at least 18 clubs in League One recorded a loss in the 2024/25 financial year. Is this sustainable… or is a catastrophic event imminent in the EFL?
Championship Club Finances 2024/25
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.
No club can survive for the long-term in this system and if that continues, catastrophe will happen.
That’s not the prophecy of an armchair pundit on social media, but the words of Portsmouth chairman Michael Eisner.
At the time of writing, 22 of the 24 English Championship clubs had filed their financial accounts for the reporting period 2024/25. Of them, 19 recorded a loss during the financial year. And one of the clubs that was profitable, Stoke City, benefitted rather nicely by owner John Coates – he of bet365 fame – essentially writing off a £90 million loan that was owed to his family.
Otherwise, the Potteries outfit would have filed a loss of £29 million for the financial year. That’s a mere drop in the ocean compared to the operating losses of Hull City (£41.7 million) and Norwich City (£39.6 million).
How can second-tier clubs go on like this? The truth is that without promotion to the Premier League, or a wealthy benefactor with the will and means to stomach such almighty losses year on year, they can’t. Or, as football financial analyst Paul Quinn puts it more succinctly:
The financial data across the 2025-26 EFL Championship reveals a systemic reliance on external liquidity to mask deep structural unprofitability.
Clubs are not generating enterprise value; rather, owners are absorbing sunken costs to satisfy the EFL’s Profitability and Sustainability thresholds and avoid technical insolvency.
This in itself becomes a chicken-and-egg scenario. If Championship clubs are losing such extortionate amounts each season, why would they be attractive to external liquidity providers and investors… even those with many millions to burn?
Bristol City is an interesting model. They’ve never played in the Premier League and haven’t been in the English top-flight at all since 1980. Their owner, Steve Lansdown, has invested more than £280 million of his own money into the club since 2002, but they have posted losses in 23 of the intervening years.
If Lansdown says enough is enough and sells up, who would be willing to bankroll a club like the Robins to such a tune? It’s the sort of rhetorical question that many Championship clubs, without a sustainable business model and an over-reliance on an individual benefactor, are going to face in the years ahead as more and more owners look to sell what is a costly extravagance with little in the way of a return beyond an ego boost.
Problems in the Pyramid
And don’t think that these issues are exclusive to the Championship either… League One and League Two clubs are also becoming embroiled in the race to Armageddon. Blackpool, briefly a Premier League club but a classic EFL outfit all told, posted a loss of £4.3 million in 2024/25.
It’s a lot less than most Championship sides, of course, but for a side battling relegation from League One that doesn’t have any great pull outside of the local area, it’s evidently a slippery slope towards disaster.vThey have been bankrolled since 2019 by Simon Sadler, but his involvement in a court battle in Hong Kong – over an allegation of ‘insider trading’ – could potentially impact his long-term investment in Blackpool FC. And then what happens to them?
All in all, 18 League One sides posted a loss in 2024/25. Those ranged from the negligible (Wigan made a loss of £400,000) to the catastrophic, with Wycombe (£9.9 million), Bolton (£13.9 million) and Cardiff City (£35.1 million) all losing as much as some Championship clubs.
Although there are some caveats – Wycombe’s losses were partly due to investment in their home stadium and training ground, the overall picture is gloomy should their cash-rich owner halt his investment in the near future.
As football finance expert Kieran Maguire has pointed out: “We seem now to have moved into a new era whereby club owners are willing to subsidise clubs to a greater extent.
And that’s okay until it’s not okay. You only have to have someone having a change of heart or change of circumstances as we’ve seen at Derby, Chelsea and others… that’s the scary thing.
Bankrolling success is one thing… but bankrolling failure? That’s probably not what Carlisle United owner Tom Piatak had in mind when taking over the Cumbrian club in 2023. The American is a multi-millionaire that owns one of the largest logistics companies in the United States, but any ambition of guiding Carlisle up the league pyramid has stalled – to some cost.
During the 2024/25 season, in which they were relegated from League Two into the National League, they posted an operating loss of £5.1 million. After the relegation, Piatak said that he and his family ‘we will continue to invest to help the club move forward in a sustainable and responsible way.’ But just how sustainable are £5.1 million annual losses at the lower end of professional football in England… no matter how rich you are?
Port Vale lost £6.1 million in 2024/25, but at least they were promoted to League One… and an FA Cup quarter-final at Stamford Bridge will have also boosted the Valiants with some much-needed revenue.
