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Portsmouth chairman Michael Eisner has warned of a looming financial catastrophe in the Championship after Pompey became the latest second-tier club to post losses.
While the £4.36m loss for the 2024-25 financial year is relatively modest compared to rivals Hull City, who reported a £41.7m loss in December, and Coventry City, who last month posted a £21.6m loss, it follows the same uncomfortable trend.
Eisner, 84, the former CEO of Disney, fears English football has become dangerously imbalanced with the wealth of the Premier League masking the problems below.
"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," said Eisner.
"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.
"We need effective player salary cost controls, real attention to fairer distribution of media revenues and for English football to join the rest of the sports world in more advanced commercialisation of the broadcast and streaming product.
"My family is walking headstrong into this storm, but if I was a historic fan in Portsmouth, I'd scream for change in the structure to protect the beautiful game and our clubs and their communities for generations to come."
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