Liverpool have revealed the scale of their battle against ticket touting, shutting down more than 145,000 ticket accounts in just two years and handing out a record number of lifetime bans.
Figures seen by BBC Sport show the club issued 1,114 lifetime suspensions last season alone, a dramatic rise from just 75 the previous campaign.
Eleven of those were applied to season-ticket holders. Officials say the surge in bans followed the detection of widespread use of software to manipulate the ticketing system.
The crackdown has also seen 500 fans refused entry at Anfield in the past 12 months after being caught trying to enter with “burner phones,” devices often used by touts to mask their identities and avoid detection.
Liverpool has handed out over 1000 lifetime bans in the last year
| PAThe figures come a week after a BBC investigation exposed the industrial-scale black market in Premier League tickets. Despite laws banning re-sale in the UK, many online operators continue to thrive by basing their operations overseas.
Resellers were found to be deploying bots and fake identities to secure hundreds of tickets at a time, which are then sold on for inflated prices.
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As a result, genuine fans are left paying extortionate fees or sometimes losing their money altogether when tickets prove to be invalid.
Liverpool’s investigators also dismantled 162 social media groups — with a combined membership of more than a million people — that were facilitating fake sales or re-selling genuine tickets at excessive rates. The club carried out nearly 400 targeted checks on matchdays, blocking access for accounts flagged for suspicious activity.
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Fans risk paying outrageous prices and being refused entry
|REUTERS
The club believes the introduction of multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, and enhanced fraud detection technology has been a significant factor in shutting down 100,000 fake accounts last season. Liverpool operates a sanctions panel, made up of senior officials and an independent supporters’ representative, which decides on appropriate punishments ranging from suspensions to lifetime bans.
Most of the lifetime penalties were imposed for the unauthorised re-sale of season tickets, memberships, or hospitality passes.
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Liverpool are not alone in ramping up efforts to curb touting. Arsenal say they have cancelled almost 74,000 accounts and banned over 7,000 memberships this season, while Chelsea claim to have blocked more than 350,000 bot-led purchase attempts.
But Football Supporters’ Association chief Tom Greatrex has questioned whether enough is being done across the league. “Long-term supporters are finding it impossible to get tickets because of the way they are made available through secondary agencies,” he said. “This is becoming endemic across the game.”
11 season ticket holders were banned
|REUTERS
The Premier League has urged fans to exercise “extreme caution” when using unofficial sites and says encrypted barcodes on digital tickets will help tackle the problem.
A Department of Culture, Media and Sport spokesman added: “The unauthorised resale of football match tickets in England and Wales is illegal. Legislation is in place to minimise the risk of disorder, with football clubs responsible for implementing their own strategies to prevent ticket sales to unauthorised resellers.”