The four sites in total listed tens of thousands of Premier League tickets for sale.
For example, more than 18,000 tickets were advertised for Arsenal v Nottingham Forest alone – nearly a third of the Emirates’ capacity.
Sport was not able to verify whether all these tickets were genuine beyond the ones we bought.
Ticket security expert Reg Walker believes “speculative listings – tickets these websites don’t have” may explain the advertised numbers.
“In reality, probably only 10-25% of those tickets actually exist,” he added.
For context, 10% would mean thousands of tickets for each round of Premier League matches.
Prices we saw ranged from £55 to £14,962, often far exceeding face value and usually including a significant booking fee.
“We had a family of Japanese tourists who paid £2,200 for tickets with an £87 face value,” said Walker, who works with Premier League clubs as a consultant and has been operating in the ticketing industry for 40 years.
Tickets were even listed for Arsenal’s exclusive Diamond Club and Manchester City’s Tunnel Club.
The Football Supporters’ Association called our findings “very concerning”.
“It confirms what we’ve heard anecdotally…this is becoming endemic across the game,” said FSA chair Tom Greatrex.
“Long-term supporters are finding it impossible to get tickets because of the way they are made available through secondary agencies.”
The Premier League, which declined to comment on the findings, sees ticketing as primarily a responsibility of the clubs, but it is in the process of renewing its central support for club anti-touting operations.
