Liverpool, Merseyside Police seize over £1.2m in latest crackdown on ticket touts

Liverpool say they and the Merseyside Police have seized over £1.2million ($1.6m) in assets related to organised ticket touts.

In the latest crackdown on the illegal resellers, they have also issued more than 400 lifetime bans with “a number of active cases” ongoing. The Premier League club issued a statement on Wednesday announcing the results of their latest effort “to protect genuine fans from being ripped off or scammed”.

Liverpool added that alongside the money seized, there have been “three cases of touting in the past 12 months”, with two resulting in convictions, and the other case to appear in court next month.

Ticket touting is the act of buying tickets for live events and reselling them at highly-inflated prices. This has been illegal in England since the introduction of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which meant only clubs or organisers were permitted to resell tickets on their own platforms.

Liverpool said that during the 2025-26 season, 432 lifetime bans were issued, 383 of which were to ‘All Red’ members — the club’s official membership program — while also handing down 115 “indefinite suspensions”, which have a minimum term of three years. Both sanctions involve a right to appeal, the club said.

The “vast majority” of the lifetime bans and indefinite suspensions were a result of the “unauthorised selling of season tickets, membership tickets or hospitality tickets”, which contravene the club’s terms and conditions, the statement said.

The money detained from the operation will be shared equally between the Merseyside Police and Home Office.

Liverpool said that last season, an average of 300 “targeted stops” per home match were carried out, preventing accounts with “suspicious activity” from entering the ground. The club said 3,608 stops took place across the season, while over 700,000 ticket registrations were analysed last season, “with 67,663 suspected fake accounts blocked or cancelled” and 121,379 accounts under investigation.

The Merseyside club holds a zero-tolerance approach to ticket touting and, last year, issued 1,114 lifetime bans. Chris Barnes, Chief Inspector at Merseyside Police told The Athletic in January 2025: “We will always take action to protect genuine fans who fall victim to touts when all they are trying to do is simply purchase tickets to support their team.”

Liverpool announced in March plans for a three per cent rise in ticket prices for next season with further inflation-linked increases to follow in 2027-28 and 2028-29. They revised this plan, however, to include a freeze on prices for the 2027-28 season after strong fan backlash.